Stahlkönigin
by DezoPenguin
Summary: An ominous prophecy and a series of criminal acts come together to herald a bitter threat to the TSAB, one in which a teenaged Vivio will find herself having to come of age, or fall. Updates weekly on Mondays.
1. Prologue

_A/N: This is the end of my Vivio-centric series of stories ("The Road Onward"; "Shell Game"; "Steel Wings";" Memory of a Saint" and "Caramel Milk" being the others). As most Nanoha fans know, not one but two new MGLN manga series started in Spring '09, moving the series onward into the future. And one of the series actually focuses on Vivio directly!_

_The down side of this is that, of course, these new manga will start writing new, official canon continuity. These stories were designed to be a _possible_ extension from canon, extending after _StrikerS_ and Sound Stage X. Since there's a good 99% chance that the basic fundamental concepts (Vivio as Vita's student; Vivio having suffered Linker Core damage in being rescued by Nanoha in _StrikerS_) will be negated by new canon, and since I'm not big on the idea of writing AU stories, I'm therefore bringing my Vivio series to an end with this story._

_But hey, if you're going to go out, why not go out with a bang? Unlike previous fics in the series, which were one or two chapters, this one's a full-length novel! With luck, the final chapter will post before 2010!_

_Massive thanks are owed to the folks at the AnimeSuki Nanoha Fanfiction Thread, who have suffered through the unedited drafts, offered suggestions and comments, translated my Belkan spell ideas into German, and generally been enthusiastic and supportive (indeed, several comments they made about _this_ story ended up helping to shape "Memory of a Saint," as I noted there)._

_Buckle up your Barrier Jackets, folks; it's going to be a long, bumpy ride!_

~X X X~

Petty Officer Golf was bored.

This was not an unusual condition for him. A guard at a naval base doesn't see a lot of activity. Particularly not a night-shift guard at an internal position. At least the guy at the gate had something to do with people coming and going. Golf was lucky if he saw one human being all night during his shift.

That was why the buzz at the door surprised him. He jerked in his chair, almost falling, then swung his feet down off the desk and hurried to the door. Peering through the small window, he saw a man there, tall and dark-eyed. He saw the naval uniform and the commander's stripes on his shoulderboards. Hastily Golf opened the door.

"Good evening, Commander," he said, saluting sharply.

"At ease, Petty Officer...Golf, is it?" The commander's forest-green eyes, a match for his shoulder-length hair, flicked towards his name tag.

"Yes, sir."

"I see. His mouth pressed into a flat, determined line. "You're on guard duty here?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then why am I in this room?" the commander snapped.

"Sir?"

"Is it the usual procedure to simply admit anyone who presses the door buzzer? I thought this was supposed to be a secure area?"

"Y-yes, sir, it is a secure—"

"But you admitted me at once because you saw a uniform?" His voice lashed at Golf like a whip. "Don't you know that these can be had at any half-decent theatrical supply shop? You haven't asked my name or to see any identification. That should have been the _first _thing you did, before you even opened the door. Then you should have cross-checked my ID code to verify that I had the proper clearance to enter this room. The door over there says 'Weapon Development Section' for a reason, Petty Officer. Just because an intruder would have to pass first the perimeter, then the building security just to get to you doesn't mean it isn't possible. I should write you up for this dereliction of duty."

Golf swallowed nervously.

"But I don't think that will be necessary," the commander, continued, his voice softening. "If I did that they'd just replace you with someone else who needs to be taught the same lesson. My experience is that a person who makes a mistake and gets called on it is less likely to repeat it than someone who hasn't."

"T-thank you, sir."

"Let's finish this, then, so I can get on with my business." He tapped the visitor's badge clipped to his uniform's breast pocket.

Golf nodded and turned to his computer, activating the keyboard and beginning to enter the data for Commander Wilton Sonoma and his ID code. Perhaps not surprisingly, things began to go wrong. Confirmation was not immediate. Golf scowled down at his screen, unable to understand what was happening.

Wilton Sonoma-it was, in fact, his actual name, something that amused him to do-could have explained these failures to him. The TSAB's computer systems were remarkably efficient and reliable, as suited the fact that like all other Mid-Childan technology they were based on magic. They were not confirming Commander Sonoma's identification and clearance because he was not in fact cleared for entry into this area of the base, nor was he a naval commander, nor indeed a member of any branch of the Time-Space Administration Bureau at all.

"Damn computer," Golf muttered under his breath.

"Don't blame your tools, Petty Officer," Sonoma said, making Golf's back stiffen. Golf obviously thought he was receiving another rebuke from his superior officer. It just made it all the easier for Sonoma to insert his blade-shaped Device into the man's spine. Like any on-duty guard Golf wore a rudimentary Barrier Jacket but he was only a typical D-ranked foot trooper, and piercing Barrier Jackets was what Sonoma's Assassin's Kiss spell was supposed to do anyway. Golf made a little gurgling noise, then toppled over onto the floor as Sonoma wrenched the blade free.

_Enough fun_, he told himself. _Time for business._ Since Golf had conveniently activated the computer for him—he hadn't been making the idiot look up his ID purely for the entertainment, after all—Sonoma stepped into his place. Basic search functions found what he was looking for almost at once and downloaded the relevant data to a storage unit, which he slipped away into an inner pocket.

He glanced down at the dead man.

"Time to make you a hero, Petty Officer."

Sonoma entered another sequence on the computer, attempting to access further data. Not surprisingly, he quickly encountered blocks; the access rights of a petty officer on guard duty did not extend very far. Sonoma persisted in his access attempts, then, very carefully, tripped an alarm sequence. The screen blazed up in bright yellow, a condition echoed by the light strip running around the juncture of the ceiling and walls. He supposed it would have been more dramatic to go for red, but putting the base on red-alert status would have autobarriered it against exiting by transportation magic, and Sonoma didn't really feel like testing his luck against the entire force.

Pointing his device at the security door, he summoned up an attack spell, a bright orange Mid-Childan rune burning beneath his feet.

"Burning Detonation-Delay 15!"

A glob of light spat from the blade's tip and stuck to the door in a roughly pyramidal shape. At once, Sonoma began to incant his transportation spell, even as his device's hollowly metallic voice began counting down from fifteen. At four, he heard pounding feet in the hallway outside, a rapidly responding security team. At two, Sonoma's body faded to translucence and was gone. At zero, the spell detonated like a shaped explosive charge, blowing the security door out into the hallway ahead of a cloud of fire. The lead two guards went down, their Barrier Jackets and autoguards preserving their lives although not enough to prevent injury, while Protection and Defenser magics kept the remainder of the response team unhurt.

The third mage in line burst through the open door almost at once, taking in the absence of a hostile mage, the dead guard, the flashing-yellow screen, and the now-red alert bar.

"Clear!" he announced. "The guard's down, sir; the computer's on yellow status." He checked the status of the other door. "WD section door is still on lockdown, the barrier seal unbroken since fourteen-twenty."

"Check," replied the team leader. "Control, this is Response Four. Intruder has apparently escaped, but he left a little surprise behind. Send medical. WD section is unbreached."

"Roger, Four. Medical en route."

"Integra, check the computer," the leader told one of his troops.

"Yes, sir," she replied. After a moment's response, she told him about the ID search, the data download, and then the failed access attempt.

"So, he gained access to this room under false pretenses, then forced Petty Officer"—he checked the guard's name tag—"Golf to access the computer for him while Golf was checking his clearance. Only, Golf fobbed him off by downloading some superficial data and then tripped an alarm."

"Do you think that he did it on purpose, sir?" Integra asked.

"It's the only way that it plays for me. Someone goes to the trouble of getting inside the base to a priority-linked computer, he's ready to hack into the system for sensitive data. The way I see it, Golf deliberately put the wrong info on the intruder's storage unit, then set off the alarm by not doing what the guy wanted him to."

Integra nodded.

"I wish we'd caught the intruder, though, sir. I knew Golf; he was a good kid."

"Me, too, but at least his spirit can be happy that whomever this, what did you say the name was, Sonoma?"

"That's right. Probably false, though."

"Probably. But even so, Golf can at least rest easy that he kept the sensitive data out of Sonoma's hands. The only thing he got away with was the schedule for routine fleet exercises. That stuff would be released to the public transit authorization authorities anyway, so all he did was get it a week or two before everybody else on the planet would get to read it anyway."

~X X X~

Carim Gracia, Commander of the Knights of the Belkan Saint Church, was worried. The elegant thirtysomething blonde possessed considerable power, both political and magical, so most of her concerns were things that she could deal with more or less easily. This kind of problem, though, was quite different.

She stared at the deck of cards in front of her. They sat there, the elaborately painted plaques of thin wood rather than paper. There was nothing special about them in particular—Carim could have attuned her gift to any deck—but she had a fondness for these because they had belonged to her mother. They beckoned to her, calling to the Knight-Commander like the flame called to the moth.

Carim was the possessor of a Rare Skill, a unique gift, a tweak in the genetics that made her a user of Belkan magic. This was an inheritance from Ancient Belka, from the days when that empire had been an active ruler instead of a historical footnote. Perhaps appropriate for a churchwoman, Carim was a prophet. She could use the cards to gain cryptic, even sometimes misleading, but nonetheless accurate glimpses of what was to come.

She didn't call upon this power often. It was useful, but continuous reliance on it created trouble, a web of contingencies and branching paths that ultimately denied the value of human intervention. Even when she did use it, she'd found that the best solution was to take note of what was said and arrange for people to be in place to act as best they could.

And then there were the times that the power called her.

Carim had felt it that night, the tickling at the back of her mind, the pressure behind her eyes that told her the enhanced perception of her gift wanted—_needed—_to be used.

Taking a deep breath, she lifted the cards from the table and released her magic. A soft humming filled her mind as the cards rose from her hands, levitating in a ring around her, turning and turning, shining with a soft glow. They called to Carim hypnotically, the images on the cards flickering before her gaze, taking shape, painted pictures seeming to come to life, archaic images replaced with people clad in modern clothing, antique buildings turning to skyscrapers. Warriors were medieval swordsmen one minute, TSAB soldiers the next, carried in chariots, then in troop transports. All around her, the tangible reality of her office faded to nothingness as the visions consumed her.

Then the spinning began to slow. The cards shone with a soft light, but one was illuminated brightly, culled from all the rest. Carim reached out, scarcely aware that she was doing so, and her fingertips lightly brushed the image of a tower shattering beneath a lightning bolt. Her lips parted, and the words came through her.

_"When the Night Sky shall reign o'er Asgard, the Guardian shall turn his spear in rebellion to bring forth the Fall, save should the King's Mother be willing to bear the crimson brand."_

Carim sagged back into her chair while the cards swirled down, neatly resuming their stack on the table before her. For a long moment the Knight-Commander did not move, letting the force of the magic ebb away. But her mind was already at work, putting the pieces together as best she could. When she felt herself able to talk freely, she opened a communications link to the Knights' security office. A young woman, her eyes bright and eager despite the hour, appeared on her screen.

"Yes, Lady Carim?"

"Sister Nova, please open a secure connection for me to TSAB Ground Forces Headquarters, eyes-only for General Yagami Hayate."


	2. Chapter I

"Congratulations on your promotion, General Yagami."

Duncan Sebring was not the kind of man whose appearance and bearing immediately screamed "Field Marshal" at those who saw him. He was below-average in height and slightly built, his gray hair was thin and wispy and his face scored by a thousand wrinkles. Appearances, Yagami Hayate knew, were very much deceiving. As a contemporary of the "Three Great Admirals," Marshal Sebring had been directly responsible for the Ground Forces receiving equal status in the military structure (if not in prestige or budgeting) of the then newly-formed Time-Space Administration Bureau to the Navy. His mind was lethally incisive and his political skill remarkable, though he preferred to keep his direct involvement on a one-on-one basis and conduct public work through front men with superior personal charisma.

"Thank you, sir," Hayate replied.

"It's a remarkable achievement for one so young. Only twenty-nine years old, and already reaching three-star rank. You're our youngest Lieutenant General in Ground Forces history. Though," the old man added with a smile that made dozens of the lines on his face dance like a kaleidoscope pattern, "I suppose you're used to it by now." He tapped a key on his desktop and a holoscreen phased in at right angles to both of them, displaying what was clearly Hayate's dossier. "Youngest task force commander, youngest colonel, youngest brigadier, youngest major-general..."

Hayate's childhood training was to deflect the compliment with a polite demurral. Mid-Childan culture, though, was not Japanese. Moreover, she had a good idea that Sebring was leading up to something; he hadn't requested this meeting merely for social purposes. After all, she too was familiar with deceiving appearances. Her petite build, pixie-cute face and short brown hair made her look even younger than her age; she could have passed for a university student with little trouble.

"I'm aware of the honor."

"I was sure you would be."

He gestured at the screen.

"As a matter of fact, I've been following the details of your career. Your youth is not the only remarkable thing about you. Mages of any power level are the exception among Ground Forces general officers, and you are the only one native to a non-administered world. Of course, those go hand-in-hand; if you weren't a mage you'd certainly be living out an ordinary life on that world, never having any contact with Mid-Childa or the TSAB."

Hayate smiled at that.

"Well, hopefully not _too_ ordinary, sir. That would be boring."

"Quite," he replied, smiling back, then turned to face the screen. "Let's see, now. You were the ward of Admiral Gil Graham, who himself is a native of Non-Administered Planet 97...'Earth,' I believe you call it?"

Hayate was sure that his checking the data was a pretense. If her background was at all relevant Sebring surely knew it by heart.

"Partially through his connivance," he continued, "you were involved both as a perpetrator and as a victim of the so-called 'Book of Darkness' incident, at the age of nine. In successfully suppressing this dangerous Lost Logia, you were left as a mage of extraordinary potential, and in addition with the sworn service of a unit of independent programs, four Ancient Belkan knights that had been absorbed by the Book as its guardians, collectively referred to as the Wolkenritter. Although they hold positions within the TSAB, their unquestioned loyalty is to you personally rather than the chain of command."

"Marshal, I can't think of any occasion when any of the Wolkenritter have chosen my agenda over—"

Sebring held up his hand.

"Peace, General. I don't mean to criticize either them or you. I'm merely stating the facts. In truth, the only reason they joined the TSAB at all was for your sake, so they could continue to legally operate as your guardian knights. Similarly, your own service with us began following your—and their—trial for that incident. Having caused us considerable trouble but being of fundamentally innocent character, it was decided that you would serve to assist the TSAB with your skills, a kind of community service if you will. You were given a choice of assignments and opted for the Ground Forces, where you were assigned to the Special Investigations Branch."

"With my magical abilities and that of the Wolkenritter, it was believed we'd do the most good in that capacity."

"As it proved. After a year's probationary period, you were admitted to OCS and were commissioned as an officer and therefore a full SIB investigator at the age of eleven. Your work was extraordinary, leading to rapid promotions. At age sixteen, however, you shifted priorities and entered the unit command path. At nineteen you were placed in command of Lost Property Riot Force 6, a cross-service task force assigned to address the Lost Logia known as Relics. You successfully closed the incident within a matter of months despite the fact that it connected directly to corruption within the TSAB Council and your own Ground Forces superiors as well as the machinations of wide-area dimensional criminal Jail Scaglietti. After RF6 was dispersed, its mission completed, you were promoted to Colonel and have since held a number of command and administrative positions, in which your performance had been exemplary. I note a consistent pattern which RF6 exemplifies: perhaps because of your extensive contacts throughout the TSAB structure, you show a notable facility for building consensus between different groups but without sacrificing the army's prestige. That leads me to the one question I had for you."

Hayate had no idea what he was leading up to.

"General Yagami, why did you join the Ground Forces?"

She blinked in surprise.

"Excuse me?"

"You weren't specifically assigned to the Ground Forces. You could have as easily joined the Navy, either the main line or the Enforcement Bureau. Some would suggest that it would have been the most natural choice. You come from a non-administered world, so the Navy was the part of the TSAB that you'd interacted with. Your guardian was a Naval admiral, and your close friends and allies Lindy and Chrono Harlaown are ranking flag officers as well."

He drummed his fingers on the desk.

"What's more, high-potential mages almost invariably opt for the Navy or the Air Force. You're SSS now, I believe?"

Hayate shook her head.

"SS+. I never took the SSS test; I've barely spent any time in the field personally these past ten years, so while my magic may be up to the test my combat skills have atrophied since I was a teenager. Even then I mostly won fights through superior firepower than skill. That's one reason why I moved to a command position; now I can resolve situations through tactics other than overkill force."

Sebring chuckled.

"A valid point. I must say, I've long held the belief that our mage ranking system is flawed, as it grades out on a combination of magical power and the ability to effectively use that power in combat, which are two very different things. Though I suppose it gives a commander an instant thumbnail of a mage's combat capacity, which is useful. But don't let my personal hobby-horses distract us."

_As if you were distracted for even a moment_, Hayate thought with an inner laugh.

"Do you know how many S-ranked or above mages are in the Ground Forces?"

"No, sir."

"Four. Six if we include your Colonel Signum and Captain Vita, who technically hold Air Force billets but are, as we said, ultimately loyal to you. As noted, a very unusual career path for a mage of your potential."

"To be fair, there's not a lot of precedent for people who are leashed to renegade Lost Logia prior to the age of ten."

The Marshal smiled at her again.

"Indeed there isn't."

He reached for a black-enameled box decorated with gold filigree that sat on the edge of his desk. From it he took a thin, tightly-rolled cigar, almost a cigarillo.

"Do you mind, General?"

"It's your office, sir."

He picked up an ornamental lighter and snapped it on, holding the tip of the cigar in the flame, then set the lighter back down and inhaled. Not a whiff of smoke reached Hayate's nostrils; air-filtration systems must have been in effect. _Probably the same mechanism that scrubs the air of poison gases and the like_, she reflected, considering whose office this was and the probable level of magical security in place.

Smoking, the smile vanished from the Marshal's face. It was as if a mask had been stripped away and the man Hayate had known lurked behind the affable-grandfather routine stood revealed. He waved away the screen with Hayate's dossier.

"Do you want to know my theory, General Yagami?"

It was clearly not a question, and he did not wait for an answer.

"I think you selected the Ground Forces precisely _because_ of our lack of elite mages."

He took another puff, then exhaled, the stream of smoke vanishing inches after leaving his lips.

"I'll be blunt: compared to the Navy's Enforcement Bureau, our SIB is a cross-dimensional joke. If they did a broadcast drama about it a running gag would be for the lead to announce, 'I'm with Ground Forces Special Investigation Branch' and the reply to be, 'Who?' If you had chosen to become an Enforcer, you would have been one more face among a number of more experienced, better-trained investigators. In the SIB, you were practically unique. With the addition of the Wolkenritter to you, you were guaranteed to receive high-profile, high-priority assignments simply because you had the capacity to deal with them. So long as you were successful, you were all but guaranteed to become an elite investigator. With you as its foremost investigator, the SIB meant something within the TSAB, and as a consequence your own prestige skyrocketed. You traded on that prestige. In short, you were the big fish in our small pond, and you're a three-star today because of it."

"Apparently I was a rather conniving nine-year-old."

"I suspect you were conniving at age two, General. I also suspect that Admiral Graham or Chrono Harlaown may have put a word in your ear at the time."

He gestured with his cigar.

"Ambition isn't a crime in a general officer, so long as it's backed by the ability to do the job. To succeed at flag rank demands political acuity as much as military or administrative skill, and the point of my little digression is to let you know that I believe you to possess it."

Hayate grinned impishly.

"Unless I'm about to tell you that I joined the Ground Forces because I liked the brown uniforms."

Sebring laughed, a deep belly-laugh that didn't suit his small frame.

"Which you're not."

"Of course not, sir. Even if it were true."

He chuckled again, then rose from his desk. As he did, he beckoned to Hayate, and she followed to stand beside him at the floor-to-ceiling window. The view of the city was panoramic, though Hayate's eye was caught by two seabirds wheeling and turning above one of the skyscrapers. Cranagan was a long way from the ocean; like herself they were displaced outsiders, having to make a new home for themselves in this unique world.

"When Riot Force 6 dealt with the JS Incident, it cost me Regius Gaiz. In his zeal, he'd taken a wrong turn ethically, but he'd never lost sight of one thing: the importance of preserving the status and prestige of the Ground Forces. Human history, regardless of world, regardless of technology or magic, is a history of warfare and conflict. Societies, no matter how utopian, inevitably fall when justice and power become divided from one another.

"The TSAB has many missions, but our part in that is not complex. We are a military organization. Our purpose is to be ready to direct armed force when and where necessary to preserve the ideals of our society. To that end we must maintain maximum combat readiness, and not become a mere appendage of other groups with fundamentally different agendas. We must do all this without losing our clear sight, so that power does not become an end in and of itself, lest we become that which we are meant to stand against." He paused, then said, "Did you know that I'm acrophobic?"

"Sir?"

"It's true. Standing here turns my damn guts to water, makes me feel like I'm going to pitch right through the glass and keep going. Of course, not being a mage I can't fly. But I stand here anyway, every single day. Do you know why?"

"As a reminder?" Hayate ventured.

"Very good, General. That's it exactly. To remind myself that I'm not some god on high without flaws, and to remind myself of whose benefit all this is for. Them." He pointed out at the city. "Those people. And all the others. Start thinking it's for yourself or for some abstract idea and you're lost."

He turned to face her.

"General Taurus has been bugging me to let her retire for three years now. I've been putting her off until I could find someone suitable to fill Gaiz's shoes, someone young and ambitious and full of fire, but with brains and spirit besides. Well, now I've found her. Congratulations, Lieutenant General, you're being offered the position of Capital City Defense Forces Commander and its sister position, Ground Forces Representative to the TSAB High Council."

Hayate tried not to let her surprise show. She'd been expecting some kind of substantial appointment once it became clear she wasn't going to receive a dressing-down, but _this..._ Basically, Sebring was announcing that she was his new heir apparent for the post of Ground Forces Supreme Commander.

"Do you accept?"

"This is a bit of short notice, sir."

"Do you need time to think it over?"

Hayate smiled.

"No, Marshal. I'll accept."

"Good. If you'd had to think it over, you wouldn't be worthy of the appointment. Communications, open secure link to General Jillian Taurus."

The screen phased open, showing a plump, almost grandmotherly face.

"Congratulations, Jill; you're off the hook. She said yes."

"It's about time, too. Nice to meet you, General Yagami. I've kept your chair warm."

"Let's make it official, then," Sebring continued. He opened up the computer screen again. "Record position appointment, effective immediately, all relevant postings and memoranda to be issued: Position Commander CCDF, accept resignation of General Taurus, Jillian, ID code—"

General Taurus filled that in.

"—appointment effective immediately, Lt. General Yagami, Hayate, ID code—"

It was Hayate's turn, this time.

"—redirect all relevant communications to..." He paused, then asked Hayate, "General, do you have a specific call sign you'd like to use?"

She smiled back at him.

"I do. In the spirit of our discussion, please designate the operations office of the Capital City Defense Forces 'Long Arch.'"

Sebring grinned at her.

"Oh, yes, you'll do just fine."


	3. Chapter II

To say that Hayate's first week at her new post was easy would have been laughable. The workload was immense, the coordination of a myriad of units from the various service branches on top of the political concerns. But Hayate was also good at what she did, experienced in a variety of command posts, and most importantly to her way of looking at it, surrounded by trustworthy and competent friends.

Three of those friends were with her on the glide-path that wove its way through the grounds of Ground Forces HQ. By her side was Signum, the Knight of the Sword, leader of the Wolkenritter. Hayate had appointed the stern, pink-haired woman to command the CCDF's special operations unit, essentially a team of commando-unit strike mages.

Sitting on Hayate's shoulder was her Unison Device, Reinforce Zwei. Though she appeared to be a foot-tall woman with white hair, she was in fact a near-unique AI who in addition to being a functioning A-rank mage on her own was capable of joining with another mage to provide a substantial enhancement to their abilities. Holding the formal rank of Sergeant-Major, Rein had served as Hayate's _de facto_ aide since her creation.

Trailing them was Hayate's actual aide as CCDF Commander, Tarrant Gallardo. She'd inherited him from her predecessor, and he'd proven to be immensely valuable. He knew the organizational structure inside and out, a prerequisite for her to be able to make any kind of functional decisions. The clean-shaven, blue-haired man was typically reserved in his manner; Hayate wasn't sure whether that was simply his own personality or a cautious attitude towards a newcomer.

"63 percent of the new magic-capable Ground Forces cadets have been Belkan-style users despite the relatively small proportion of knights to mages—"

"Tch."

"Excuse me, Colonel Signum? Did I say something wrong?"

"It's all right, Gallardo; go on," Hayate told him.

"But if I've offended—"

Hayate shook her head.

"It isn't you that's given offense. Signum just doesn't like that term."

"Which term?"

"Knight," Signum said, her voice level.

Gallardo rubbed the back of his neck.

"Um, forgive me if I'm way off here, but I thought _you_ were a Belkan knight?" he asked.

"That's exactly the point," Rein said, hopping into the air to hover in front of Gallardo. "Signum is a genuine Ancient Belkan knight. Today we use the word 'knight' to refer to a practitioner of Belkan-style magic to differentiate them from Mid-style 'mages,' but that isn't what it meant for the Belkans. To them, a knight was an elite magic warrior, someone who had proven their proficiency in magic, in battle, and in character. There would be no such thing as a cadet who was also a knight."

"I see."

"It's not important," Signum brushed it off. "Times change."

Hayate said nothing. She knew very well that Signum's casual attitude was all about maintaining her stoic facade, particularly in front of Gallardo, who was still too much of a stranger for confidences. Hayate didn't want to leave it there, but forcing things would do more harm than good.

Rein, on the other hand, could be counted on to not let something drop once the bit was between her teeth.

"Of course it's important!" she said. "Being a knight means a lot to you as a mark of who you are. Having that status changed to mean something else entirely isn't a small thing!"

"Geez, Blue, learn to shut _up _already!"

Everyone looked up as a second figure Rein's size but with blazing red hair and devil-like wings descended towards them. Agito was a Unison Device like Rein, but a genuine Belkan artifact uncovered by Jail Scaglietti and who now had attached herself to Signum. Agito was flamboyant, outgoing, and hot-tempered while Rein was orderly and detail-conscious, so they were about as compatible with each other as their fire and ice elements.

"What? Did you decide to wake up and come to work at last?"

"Good thing I did, finding you running at the mouth as usual!"

"If you'd _been_ here you might have seen that your mistress was in trouble!"

"I'm her _partner_, damn it, which is why I know that babbling like an idiot is just making things worse!"

The glide-path took the three humans away from the squabbling devices, who were so busy with their argument that they were hovering in place instead of floating along.

"Er...is this a usual thing?" Gallardo ventured.

"They're good for one of those a day, though they usually keep it for at home," Hayate murmured, blushing. Signum closed her eyes and folded her arms under her breasts in her classic "leave me out of this" pose.

"Anyway, Colonel, I'm sorry if I caused offense," Gallardo ignored her body language.

"You didn't. I just wish they'd have thought up something else to call users of Modern Belkan-style magic."

"_Modern_ Belkan?"

Hayate decided it was her turn to explain since Rein was still having it out with Agito fifty yards away.

"It's a style of magic that uses Belkan techniques for enhancing physical combat, but it's only a fraction of what the Belkan mages were able to do. We augment the Belkan magic with Mid-style spells to make it a more complete style, but it only scratches the surface of Ancient Belkan magic, which was as complex and varied as our Mid-style magic. The problem is, most of that has been lost to history. With the exception of a few Rare Skills passed down in families with Belkan bloodlines, which are more akin to inherent abilities than true magic anyway, there are only two users of Ancient Belkan magic around today other than the Wolkenritter."

"You're one of them, aren't you, General?"

"You've been studying!" she replied with a smile. "With that kind of attention to detail, you should know who the other one is, too."

~X X X~

_**"Schwalbeflieger."**_

Takamachi Vivio, fifteen years old, adopted daughter of Ace of Aces Takamachi Nanoha, dodged through the air as the four explosive metal spheres homed in on her. She twisted, arced, and managed to get the four projectiles all behind her, closing in on her feet.

_"Panzerschild!"_

The triangular shield of bright white light sprang into being behind her, and the homing missiles slammed into it before their caster had a chance to make them veer off.

"Going to have to do better than that, Vita-sensei!" Vivio called, right before the hammer clocked her upside the head. She'd completely lost track of her trainer in the course of avoiding the missiles, and Vita had used the distraction to get in close and put Graf Eisen, her warhammer-type Armed Device, to its most fundamental use.

"Don't lose sight of your opponent, kid," Vita pointed out. She had a body that was fixed at about twelve years old, with red hair, pigtails, and a bright red dress and floppy hat that made her seem even more cute, but in battle the Iron Hammer Knight of the Wolkenritter was all business.

Vivio heard more than saw the distinctive clunk of Graf Eisen's head rising and falling as it loaded a cartridge and ejected the spent brass. Charged with extra mana, the hammer switched to _Raketenform_: the striking surface spouted a chisel point and the back side transformed into a rocket engine.

_"Raketenhammer!"_ Vita shouted; the engine ignited, and the hammer whipped around with a combination of kinetic and magical force that would have ended the battle right then if it had hit.

Vivio, though, wasn't inclined to let that happen. Though the blow she'd taken had hurt, the basic defense of her Barrier Jacket, even in the weakened form of her flight-capable Valkyrie Mode, was capable of absorbing a hit of that strength. Her wings snapped upwards as she did a mid-air somersault-roll over the hammer.

_"Panzerschild!"_

This time she didn't conjure the shield between herself and danger, but away from herself, directly in Graf Eisen's path. Vita had been aware that she'd missed her strike; she _wasn't _expecting the sudden, jarring impact of attack meeting shield. This was particularly true because shield defenses, unlike barriers, were repelling defenses that kicked back some of the force that struck them.

_**"Walkure Eile,"**_ called out the deep, rumbling voice of Parsifal, Vivio's own device. A burst of acceleration launched her forward at Vita, and she slammed into the knight's back with both fists, her armored gauntlets turned into crushing weapons in her Valkyrie Rush attack. Vita jolted forward, but spun, hand short-arming the grip on Graf Eisen, and blasted another _Raketenhammer_ squarely into Vivio's left shoulder. She shot back from the blow and her left wing dissolved into blued-steel shards from the impact.

Without the added boost of her flight enabler, Vivio began to drift downwards, losing altitude. In Valkyrie Form her flight abilities weren't her usual "plummet like a stone" but she needed Parsifal's help to do more than a controlled drift. Air combat was out of the question, so she angled back towards one of the training ground rooftops while her device tried to rebuild its structure. To hold Vita off, she conjured a ball of rainbow-speckled white light and punched it towards her.

_"Panzerfaust!"_

Vita charged, ready to swat the attack away with a blow from Graf Eisen, but Vivio split the orb into four separate projectiles that arced around to home in on her teacher from four directions.

_**"Panzergeist,"**_ Graf Eisen declared, and Vita was surrounded in an omnidirectional barrier that easily stopped all four missiles. The shield made her hold immobile during its effect, though, and that let Vivio open up distance.

"Good try, but not good enough!" Vita crowed. Graf Eisen popped another cartridge and suddenly swelled into immensity, the hammer head actually larger than Vita's entire body. Vita reared back, the slow-drifting Vivio an easy target, the near twenty-foot pole actually flexing under the hammer's weight.

_"Giganto Crusher!"_

_"Panzerschild!"_

Again, Vivio's shield didn't appear between her and the giant hammerhead, but well away from her body—precisely where, in fact, Vita's clenched fists crashed into it when she was barely a third of the way through her swing, stopping the whole thing and making her rock back in the air.

Vivio's feet hit the ground. _Now!_ she thought excitedly. _Now I've got a shot at this!_ The vambrace that was Parsifal's core rose and fell, loading two cartridges, and she pointed her right fist at Vita, left hand gripping her wrist as if steadying a gun for aiming.

_"Blitzkrieg!"_

Eight rainbow-streaked orbs the power of an undivided _Panzerfaust_ phased in in a circle around her wrist, and in the next instant shot at Vita. Graf Eisen's autoguard reacted at once, calling up its own _Panzerschild_, but all eight orbs slammed brutally into it in flaring explosions of white light.

_Did it—?_

_"Giganto Crusher!"_

Recovery from her high-powered attack left Vivio unable to forestall Vita's strike the same way as she had the first time. By the time she got her feet under her, magically speaking, all she could do was have Parsifal fire off another cartridge and raise her enhanced shield spell.

_**"Eisenschild!"**_

When the dust cleared, Vivio felt like one giant bruise. On the other hand, she was still conscious, which was a good thing. Vita landed next to her.

"I think that's it for today."

"Yes, I'd say so," Vivio moaned. Finding herself unable to move, she was a little scared at first, then realized what had happened, then yanked first one arm, then the other up and used them to help push herself out of the Vivio-shaped outline her body had made in the concrete roof. "You held back, sensei," she pouted.

"Did not."

"Then why am I still awake?"

"Don't fish for compliments, kid. And what's someone who was scared of a mock battle with her own mom wanting me to go all-out on her for, anyway?"

Vivio moaned.

"Geez, Vita-sensei, you're _never _going to let me live that down, are you?"

"Nope!" Vita said cheerfully, then shook her left hand, wincing a little.

Vita had been Vivio's personal combat trainer since she was ten. They were both users of Ancient Belkan magic, and in style they were both close-combat forwards so their tactical approach was bound to be similar. They were mirror images in one way, though: Vita came on with relentless offense, using Graf Eisen to destroy anything and everything in her path, while Vivio was a shield wall, using barrier magic to keep enemies from being able to strike effectively while her own teammates would dispatch them.

Vivio was actually an A-ranked mage, which meant that she should barely have been able to get the S- Vita to even notice her in a one-on-one fight. Her defensive spells, though, were every bit as good as Vita's offense; it was just that the rest of her magic couldn't keep up. This was because she was actually an artificial-life clone of ancient Belkan royalty. If allowed to grow naturally her potential would have easily made her equal to Hayate, but her Linker Core had been permanently damaged when Nanoha-mama had saved her from Jail Scaglietti, who'd created her because a Belkan Saint-Emporer was key to activating the ancient Saint's Cradle, a giant combination of castle and battleship with planet-ravaging power.

She regretted the loss a little. More power would have given her better ability to live her dream of using her magic to help protect her people like her mothers did. But it was weird enough that some members of the Saint Church considered her a figure of religious veneration without having the abilities of an actual Saint-Emporer, thank you!

"Hey, kid, you still with us?"

"Huh? Yeah, just thinking."

"You should have Shamal look you over anyway. Post-concussion syndrome is nothing to laugh at."

"Really, I'm fine, just a little shaken."

"You're going, and that's that-because I'm pretty damn sure you broke my hand and I'm not going in there without _some_ evidence that I _won_!"

"I..._broke_..."

"It hit the shield a little hard on the first Giant Crusher, and the backblast on the second one finished the job."

"Wow, that makes me feel better about getting driven into a roof."

"You were such a cute kid. What happened?" Vita joked, and Vivio patted her on the head.

"Puberty."

"Brat. I'd bop you on the head if those royals didn't breed for size." Vivio had gone off on a major growth spurt at thirteen and was actually taller than any of her friends. "Come on, let's put those long legs to use and get going over to Shamal's."

"Wait...you want us to _run_ there?"

"You didn't break my legs, girl. Of course we run."

"Next time, maybe I _should _let you knock me unconscious," Vivio groaned.


	4. Chapter III

"Three broken bones, actually," Shamal summed up the examination of Vita's hand, "to say nothing of strained ligaments." She entered the specific details into the record, but didn't bother itemizing them for Vita. She knew her fellow Wolkenritter wouldn't care anyway. The elegant blonde Knight of the Lake was the support mage of Hayate's Guardian Knights, concentrating on barriers, scrying, and healing magic. The last of those was her true area of expertise, though, and that was why she was one of the chief medical officers in the TSAB military. She turned her head to Vivio. "_You_ did this?"

The teenager flinched at her sharp tone. A half-eaten breadstick fell from her lips, and she barely snagged it before it hit the floor.

"I didn't _mean_ to," she said, then blushed. There was just something about Shamal that made people act like they would with their mom. Vivio realized that she sounded just like when she'd knocked over a vase at age eight.

Shamal sighed.

"You break her hand; she drives you into a roof. Sometimes I think you close-combat types _like_ getting hurt."

Vita grinned.

"Lets you know you did something with your morning. Besides, without us you'd get lazy."

Vivio grinned back. Six years of being Vita's personal student had given the two of them a close connection. In her Barrier Jacket of charcoal gray and blued-steel, Vivio even looked like someone who'd be an associate of the Iron Hammer Knight. In her normal outfit, though, she could have been any teenager: faded blue jeans that clung to her lanky legs, a white T-shirt showing a cartoon bunny stealing secret documents from a file cabinet, and high-topped running shoes. Her long honey-blonde hair tumbled down her back, with two locks pulled forward over her shoulders held by blue ribbons. Her only accessory was Parsifal in his standby mode, a black marble bracelet with a royal blue stone. Her most distinctive feature was, as always, her eyes: the left one was red, the right green. She popped the rest of her breadstick into her mouth and crunched happily. Sesame and garlic made her mouth water.

"Hey, these are good. Where'd you get them?"

"I'll give you the recipe if you like."

Her jaw sagged in unison with Vita's, but she let her teacher actually say it.

"_You_ baked those?"

Shamal planted her hands on her hips.

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

Vivio snagged another breadstick out of the snack jar to give herself a reason to close her mouth.

"Shamal, your cooking has been mistaken for a toxic hazard spill."

"That was twenty years ago! It wasn't as if any of our masters before Hayate had ever asked us to cook; my skills got rusty over a few centuries without practice. _And_ I was dealing with alien ingredients and cooking tools!"

"Besides, you've got a reason to cook now, right?" Vivio observed, figuring it was better to be on the side of the lady making the snacks. She could shield against hammers, but didn't know any magic to conjure food.

Shamal blushed.

"The way to a man's heart is through his stomach, they say."

"And you're dating someone who eats out of a dog dish," Vita said.

"I think you're thinking of Arf," Vivio noted.

"Oh, yeah," Vita granted. "I think that's why it never worked out with her and Zafira. Zaffy might be a blue wolf, but he draws the line at considering dog biscuits as snack food."

Zafira, the Guardian Beast of the Shield, was the fourth Wolkenritter. He'd been Vivio's babysitter when she was small, so it was still kind of hard to think of him as Shamal's boyfriend. She settled for grabbing a third breadstick.

"Actually, Shamal-sensei, I really would like the recipe. When Fate-mama comes home we could make it."

"When is she due back, anyway?"

"Any day now, Vita-sensei. Her offworld shift is nearly up, so when she closes the case she's working on, she'll be coming home. She couldn't talk about the details, of course, but it should be finished with soon."

~X X X~

The dome lights in the back of the Jarentil Federal Police command van were off; with the glow from the equipment consoles and multiple active screens they weren't necessary. JFP Captain Cobalt ground his teeth nervously. Tonight's op was the culmination of eight months of work from undercover investigation to painstaking surveillance.

"Two, in position."

"Four, in position."

"Seven, in position."

The buzz of the tactical units and snipers reporting in made for background noise to the events playing out on the main screen, audio and video played back by surveillance drones. Their undercover men had been searched for transmitters, of course, but the bugging of the room itself had been accomplished externally, by remote.

The three undercover JFP agents were posing as buyers and their bodyguard. They'd finally arranged a deal of such size that it had forced Mitchell Javelin to come out in person. The man's organization ran nearly half the gray and black markets on the planet; bringing him down would cut off smuggling and illegal-exchange routes throughout the global underworld. The resulting chaos would in turn generate hundreds more arrests.

"Gentlemen, you made it," Javelin said, smiling broadly. "I'm pleased to see you. I wasn't sure what to expect." He was a big man in his early fifties, broad and powerful. His profile marked him as a fitness maven who spent at least two hours a day working out, often doing business at the same time. Yet his hands were well-manicured, his silvery hair brushed and glossy, his skin buffed and polished. His suit and topcoat were expertly tailored and of the finest materials.

"You thought we'd back out?" snapped back one of the agents.

"The exigencies of business," Javelin said with a shrug.

There was something in the exchange that Cobalt didn't like. The op almost _hadn't_ gone off, but for reasons Javelin couldn't know about, could he? Yet he was almost hinting at it. Or maybe it was just Cobalt's own nerves getting to him. So much was riding on this; they couldn't afford any screw-ups.

He knew that they were taking a big chance, politically, by doing this, but if it all went well it would make for a huge coup.

"Keep it cool, Astra," he said over the T-com. The device translated his vocal speech into telepathic communications that could be received by a mage, allowing the non-mage Cobalt to communicate with the undercover ops without using detectable communications equipment. "Don't overplay it and lose him."

"Fine, whatever," Astra's voice came over the surveillance display. "Let's just see the merchandise, all right?"

Javelin nodded, his motions casual and at ease.

"Very well. I'm glad we can still do business."

He gestured, and two workmen in overalls wheeled forward crates on hand trucks. The massive man next to Javelin, six feet six with all of Javelin's strength and none of his polish, took a crowbar and pried open the lid of one crate, then the second. The muscleboy—ironically named Flex—was Javelin's right-hand man and believed to be the syndicate's executioner, suspected of over a dozen lethal "object lessons."

"Have a look," Javelin said, smiling invitingly.

Just as Astra's team was about to step up and inspect the product, the van's back door was flung open, admitting a blast of cold night air.

"Who authorized this?" a steely voice snapped.

Cobalt ground his teeth again at the sight of the newcomer. _Of all the damned bad luck!_

"What the hell are you doing here?" he barked back. Most of the time, the best defense was an attack.

The intruder's gaze flicked over Cobalt's rank insignia.

"Was it you, Captain? Did you order this? Or did it come from higher up?"

On the screen, Astra was lifting a three-foot, rod-like item, its nickel-plated finish reflecting the dim warehouse lights.

"Personal firearm from Orusia. Thirty-two round magazine, 6.83mm caliber, three rate-of-fire settings. Not precisely a combat mage in a box, but it'll do in a pinch. There are also hand weapons, 7.91mm autoguns.

"You need to get your people out of there now," the intruder made Cobalt miss the next sentence.

"Are you insane? Eight months of planning have gone into this, all leading up to tonight!"

"Your people are at risk! You've got to pull them out, _now_."

"My people have this situation under control."

"You're acting without authority and without full knowledge of the situation!"

Cobalt snarled back. He could not _believe_ this was happening _now_, of all times!

"Look. This is a _local_ matter, a _local_ criminal syndicate. JFP has jurisdiction over local matters—"

"It's not local any more and you know it. You're grandstanding for the sake of your swelled head. Get your agents _out_ before they're hurt, or worse!"

Cobalt exhaled sharply, then swung away from his unwanted guest towards the viewscreen. Astra had already gone over the second crate—_lucky we're recording this_, Cobalt thought-and now had a look of confusion on his face.

"What is the meaning of this?" he challenged Javelin, staying in character. "This...this isn't even half of what we agreed upon! And the larger items aren't here at all."

Javelin shrugged.

"What can I say?" he said, an urbane smile on his face, spreading his hands in a gesture of mock helplessness. "I had other buyers."

"You had—"

"Buyers who could pay my price. I had grave doubts about my ability to collect from you. After all...agents of the Jarentil Federal Police are not so well-paid as all that."

"Too late," the intruder in the van sighed.

"One through six, move in now! Seven through ten, acquire targets and prepare to lay down covering—what the _hell_?"

Cobalt's expletive cut off his attempt to give orders to the tactical units. Every surveillance screen had gone black, images and sound alike lost.

"What's going on?" he barked.

"It's a barrier," said his unwelcome guest.

"She's right," replied one of the technicians. "Communications are cut off completely."

"Control, eight," reported one of the snipers. "I can't acquire anything inside the barrier."

"Control, three; I'm trying to get in but...there's just no way."

"_Damn it!_" Cobalt roared.

"Physical entry will be impossible unless the barrier is taken down," said the technician, her equipment scanning the obstacle.

"That doesn't make sense. They've bottled themselves up inside as well!"

"Transportation magic?"

"Possibly, ma'am," the technician explained. "A-rank or above could probably get through."

"_A_? JFP hasn't _got_ anyone that high outside of Special Command. By the time we call them up..." Cobalt felt the blood drain from his face as he realized the consequences.

"Did you hear that?" said the outsider.

**"Get set."**

~X X X~

"What the hell is this?" Astra barked.

"Lieutenant Astra, please try to control yourself," Javelin chided. "I know exactly who you and your two friends are. You're some of Jeremy Cobalt's friends, his big chance to arrest me on charges in trafficking in restricted and banned military materiel." He chuckled. "Too bad he had to throw this operation together on such short notice. When a man moves fast, he gets careless. Security isn't as tight as it could be, particularly since I believe that he was primarily concerned with keeping it secret from the TSAB."

Astra stared at the syndicate boss. Clearly there had in fact been a leak somewhere; not only had he been aware of the investigation but also _why_ the timetable had been pushed up.

"You can't get away with this," said Avalon, the tactical-ops sergeant who played the "bodyguard" role. "You're under full surveillance, and you've already made enough damaging admissions to put you away. Simple possession of those guns will get you five years."

Javelin clucked his tongue.

"Routan, would you like to explain to our friends what's just happened?"

"I'd be glad to."

A tall, thin man with bright blue hair swept back from his forehead stepped out of the shadows at the back of the warehouse.

"By the way, if you're wondering why your surveillance operations didn't detect Mr. Routan and his escorts, I'd advise you to check subterranean utility tunnels leading into buildings before declaring them 'clear.' Though no doubt I am belaboring the point since you certainly won't be in a position to learn from my advice."

Routan was accompanied by two men who were obviously some species of thug. One carried one of the Orusian assault rifles, while the second had a standard police issue Autocasting Neo-Magical Transmitter in each hand, each "ant" capable of firing a single charged shot of magic damage to incapacitate a target. The two workmen who'd handled the crates now also produced weapons: one a firearm and one a—_damn it, a mage device!_

"I've raised a barrier around this warehouse," Routan said flatly, without Javelin's mock civility, "to cut off access and communications. Your mages didn't feel it because I didn't shift us to alternate time-space, just sealed the area."

"Hence the reason your tactical support isn't breaking down the doors or firing snipe shots through the walls in the displays of conspicuous heroism they show on the broadcast cop shows," Javelin noted. "Your Captain Cobalt has been quite the irritant to me over the past two years, and I think that the corpses of his undercover agents, consigned to death by his own arrogance and carelessness, will be a satisfying message to leave for him."

"Maybe they can't get in to rescue us, but what about you?" Astra quickly countered. "When that barrier goes down you'll still be surrounded by JFP units."

"Who will find nothing, because Mr. Routan will have taken us away by transportation magic. A series of short-range teleports will make our progress untraceable, and we'll be off-planet within a day. Jarentil, you see, has gotten far too small for my particular ambitions. My organization has gone dimensional in scope."

He gestured casually towards the undercover men.

"Kill them."

The sound of gunfire roared out.


	5. Chapter IV

Anticipating the attack, Sergeant Avalon tried to raise a defensive barrier spell to cover the JFP agents, but it turned out to be unnecessary.

**"Defenser Plus."**

The bullets from the two thugs' firearms rattled against the dome of hazy yellow light that enveloped them, dropping harmlessly to the floor.

"Who did that?" Javelin barked, even as the mage-thug leveled his device at the barrier defense.

**"Haken Saber."**

The spinning gold arc flew out of the darkness, crashing into the mage before he could cast. Unprotected by a Barrier Jacket or automatic defensive spell, he went over at once, out of the fight.

The other fighters spun back towards the direction of the attack, weapons rising. Triggers were squeezed, sending two rapid-fire rifle bursts and a single ANT shot towards the back of the warehouse.

**"Sonic Move."**

In a blur, the figure rushed forward, faster than the eyes could follow, splitting the attackers so their shots went wild. She stopped only a few feet from Javelin, giving the JFP agents their first good look at her. She was a blonde, her long hair in twin pigtails, wearing a black Barrier Jacket and a full-length white cape. The device in her hands had a long handle and was in the form of a scythe with a blade of magical energy. This she swung down, not at Javelin, but at Flex, who was standing next to him.

**"Haken Slash."**

"Protection!"

A glowing blue barrier sprung up just in time to stop the scythe; the tip bit in, piercing the shield a good six inches, but not enough to get through to Flex. The police files put Javelin's bodyguard-assassin at a respectable B- rank, so the fact that this was all he could manage told the agents quite a bit about the respective power levels.

Fate Testarossa Harlaown wasn't particularly concerned with impressing her audience, though. The TSAB's elite Enforcer was well aware that in a fight with so many different factors, she didn't have time for almosts. She pulled Bardiche back, his scythe blade vanishing as she switched the Intelligent Device from Haken Form to Assault Form.

"Plasma Lancer!" she cried as the thugs spun around, weapons again tracking on her. Yellow energy blasts formed in midair and shot towards the thugs. One of the shooters and the man with the ANTs went over at once; the second rifleman dove aside but was tagged when the shot at him reversed course to take him in the back.

The shot she'd fired towards Routan, though, was stopped by a bright green shield spell that appeared at a snap of his fingers.

"Dimensional criminals Alexis Routan, Mitchell Javelin, and Carver 'Flex' Nyron, you are under arrest for trafficking in contraband arms. Surrender into custody and you will have the right to a fair trial," she challenged them. As an Enforcer she was technically supposed to make such a challenge in any case, but in this situation she also wanted to change the battle's course. Her experience with criminals of this sort was that they usually couldn't pass up an opportunity to argue back if given the chance. She wasn't disappointed.

"Well!" Javelin barked, a pleased smile on his face. "I have to say, I like the way that sounds. 'Dimensional criminal,' indeed."

"This isn't some local cop," Routan snapped. "She's a TSAB officer, Enforcement Bureau or possibly Army SIB."

"A cop is a cop, Routan. This one simply has better funding and equipment," Javelin corrected.

Fate considered possible angles of attack while they talked. Sonic Form was out so long as the JFP agents were there; at best they were C-ranked, more likely D if they were mages at all. The vulnerability of such low-level troops had already been demonstrated when Fate had taken down the enemy mage. She needed to stay in Impulse Form for the defensive ability.

The TSAB's files had put Routan at A- when he went rogue; after her engagement with Flex she was sure it was Routan who was responsible for the barrier. _So, do I focus on him as the main threat, or try to take Flex out because he's weaker?_

She made the decision almost as soon as she'd asked the question, beginning her next spell. Fate conjured a rune in midair before her, looking not unlike a shield, then pointed Bardiche at the center of it.

**"Get set."**

"Plasma Smasher!"

The blast of magic exploded towards Flex, a wave of bright blue energy swirling in flight. He tried to get up a Round Shield to protect himself, but it was simply too little, too late. The syndicate killer went down and out.

"Chain Bind!"

In the moment while Fate was recovering after the powerful casting, Routan acted. A rune formed on the ground, and chains shot up from it, fastening on her ankles.

"I'd stay and dance with you a little longer, but frankly I hate the hero/villain waltz," Routan said. He held up his right hand, the dark glove on it glittering as if green wires ran through it carrying pulses of energy, and little licks of emerald flame began to play along it. Fate knew what was coming: tie-her-down-then-break-out-the-big-gun was a classic tactic.

One that she wasn't inclined to play along with.

Bardiche's head rose and fell, loading a cartridge from the revolving cylinder within the handle.

**"Haken Form."**

The head tipped back, the scythe blade reappeared, and Fate swung it in a sweeping arc at the chains holding her feet.

"Inferno Reaper!"

The explosive blast of Routan's spell just missed Fate, a cannon shot of green flame not entirely different than her Plasma Smasher, except that this one was purely flame, not pseudo-elemental magic damage. No surprise; the criminal was fighting to kill.

She had his measure now, though; defense, binding, and fire-oriented shooting were his skill areas. He rather reminded her of her friend Yuuno, only a bit weaker in his defense and bindings and in that Yuuno didn't have any purely offensive magics. Either way, where he'd be weak was in close combat, an area where Fate happened to excel.

Routan took to the air at once as Fate approached. Another finger-snap conjured more chains, but she slashed them down before they could even fasten onto her. He tried to conjure more flame, but Fate was faster, snapping Bardiche's blade towards him.

**"Haken Saber."**

Routan aborted the fire spell to cast a Round Shield, blocking the saber, but Fate reconjured the blade and came in at close range, striking with it from a different angle. Routan's device had apparently been set up to autoguard, but the Protection spell didn't completely stop the strike; he went tumbling sideways through the air. Fate was on him again, coming down with a quick combination of strikes that he barely fended off. When she judged he was at his limit, she had Bardiche up the ante.

**"Haken Slash."**

Coming in from yet another angle, the spell enhanced the Haken Form's blade strikes with defense-piercing abilities. It cut through Routan's autoguard, ripped into his Barrier Jacket, and drove him down to the floor. She dove down at him, swinging Bardiche for the finishing blow. He tried to defend, but he was too off-balance from her previous attacks and a last sweep of her scythe left him unconscious.

"Nice work," Javelin announced, "and now you're going to turn it to my behalf...unless you want to see our dear friend's brains splattered all over the floor."

One of his powerful arms was locked around Lieutenant Astra's chest, while his other hand held an Orusian handgun, the barrel pressed into his hostage's ear.

"One thing I like about these mass weapons is that they're uniformly lethal. With magic damage there's always the chance that someone might fire anyway, but it's not quite so easy to justify the risks this way. My hand may slip, or even a loud voice may surprise me into firing. The explanations to the poor Lieutenant's family would—"

**"Sonic Move."**

Fate's magic-enhanced speed was more than enough to cover the ground between them and knock the gun up and away from Astra's head before Javelin even knew what was happening. In the next instant, Sergeant Avalon blasted him with a low-grade attack spell.

About ten seconds later, the doors crashed open and the JFP tactical troopers rushed inside, the barrier having evidently gone down when Fate had taken out its creator.

"Secure the prisoners," Fate snapped at them. "Unless you're looking for _more_ ways that your organization can make this investigation go wrong?"

~X X X~

"You seem to be handling things well thus far," Marshal Sebring said approvingly. "The CCDF has been running smoothly since your takeover."

Hayate shrugged.

"General Taurus left things in good shape." Part of that was the fact that Taurus's only ambition had been to retire. Since she wasn't interested in establishing a power base, she hadn't filled CCDF with loyalists who'd oppose the new regime.

"I'm actually rather sorry that I had to tie her down for so long in an appointment she had no desire for, but...you know how it is."

Hayate crossed the room to the kitchen, the communications screen rotating to follow her. Sebring had contacted her at her home, after hours, so she felt confident in pouring herself a cup of coffee.

"I'm sure she understood. We all do our best for the TSAB and the service."

He nodded.

"Speaking of which..."

_Ah, now to the point of this call._

"Yes, sir?"

"I'm informed that you intend to speak _against_ Heimdall to the Council?"

"Yes, sir. That's why I copied you with my talking points."

"I'm not sure that I understand where you're coming from on this. This is an existing defensive system which is not only under Ground Forces jurisdiction generally but within your own office's control. Had it been in place at the time of the JS incident, matters would have played out quite differently.

Hayate nodded.

"You're wondering why I'd advocate against my own power base?"

Sebring gave her a thin smile.

"It's an unusual step for a rising administrator to take."

"I don't trust it," she said flatly. "A better coordination of efforts with the Navy would solve the problem Heimdall is meant to address without presenting the risk of misuse. I've seen the design specs, Marshal. This is an overkill solution better suited for field operations. Honestly, it shouldn't be anywhere near my command."

Sebring's eyes were thoughtful. Hayate leaned back against her counter and sipped coffee, waiting for his response.

"You've given this some thought," he said.

"Either that or I'm just such a _fujoshi_ that I've seen the Evil Government Conspiracy misuse the things too often," she replied with a grin.

The Old Man of the Ground Forces chuckled.

"One day I may figure out why you always joke at your own expense."

"Someone has to," she said, grinning.

"And your counterproposal is detailed in the appendix?"

"Redeployment of the Heimdall units to key locations, revised budgetary estimates, and three scenarios for replacing the necessary functions within CCDF. I'm partial to option B."

"The permanent assignment of a squadron of Naval vessels to CCDF's overall command?" Sebring smiled, his crossed face wrinkling.

"The Ground Forces and Air Force do their part in defending the capital and the planet; I think it's time for the third branch to contribute more than investigative services, particularly given that Cranagan is the location of the SIB's headquarters."

Hayate paused for a long drink.

"So I surrender a power that I don't want and am suspicious of, and then use that as a bargaining chip for what I _do_ want," she summed up.

Her superior officer folded his hands on the desk before him, then started to laugh, shaking his head.

"I'd almost forgotten what it felt like to have someone aggressively filling that post."

"Um...thanks?"

"You're welcome—and you have my support, not that I think you'll need it." The screen shut down, leaving Hayate shaking her head, chuckling.

~X X X~

_A/N: By the way, a _fujoshi_, literally "rotten girl," can refer to a female otaku generally, or to a yaoi fangirl specifically._


	6. Chapter V

"Let's review," Fate summed up for the JFP Deputy Commissioner. "I requested JFP assistance in establishing the identity of probable activities of the Javelin syndicate, since your local knowledge and contacts vastly outweigh mine. Instead, your Captain Cobalt deliberately stalled reporting to me for three days, in order to give him time to settle a personal grudge by mounting an attempted sting operation."

The commissioner squirmed in her chair. The Ace of the TSAB Naval Enforcement Bureau was twenty-five years her junior, but the DCP felt like she was being chewed out by her mom. Fate wouldn't have been surprised to learn that as she had marked maternal tendencies, although the "stern but caring" disappointed-mother lecture was actually something she'd picked up from Takamachi Nanoha.

"Let me be clear," Fate continued. "I understand personal rivalries between criminals and the law. I've been in that position myself, and I know how it can gnaw at a person, that need to take action, to redress wrongs with your own hands. _But!_" she added, holding up one finger, "you can't let that interfere with doing your job."

If it had been Cobalt himself in front of her she'd have been a lot harsher, but as far as she could tell the DCP had only signed off on the operation without full knowledge of what Fate had requested of Cobalt or how Cobalt was messing up.

Even so, there would be an official reprimand from the TSAB to the Jarentil government. Enforcers only dealt with dimensional criminals who operated across multiple worlds, and it was important that they get local cooperation for the good of all.

"Your Javelin had been contacted by the Aldorous Enclave, an up-and-coming syndicate of arms traders, specifically because he had a pipeline into Tiburon Heavy Industries, the military contractor based here on Jarentil. Because word of Captain Cobalt's sting was leaked to Javelin, they moved up the timetable for transferring goods to Aldorous. Luckily, _I_ found out in time to have the Navy halt the transshipping of goods offworld and keep any of your agents from losing their lives, but I don't believe that we would have had anywhere near this trouble if your agency had simply done what it was supposed to."

**"Incoming call, sir,"** Bardiche interrupted. **"It's Captain Tribeca of the **_**Arista**_**."**

"I'll take it, Bardiche." A communications screen opened at once.

"Enforcer Harlaown."

"Captain Tribeca; it's good to hear from you." She returned the green-haired woman's salute. "Were you able to catch the _Triton_?"

"Yes; we stopped it four hours ago. The goods were there, labeled as your information suggested."

Fate let out a little sigh of relief.

"That's good to hear. Please escort the ship back to Jarentil so we can return the stolen goods to Tiburon and sort out which crew members are involved in the crimes and which are innocent bystanders."

"Yes, ma'am, but...we have a problem."

"Oh?"

"When we compared the manifest of what was missing with what we found, one item was missing."

"Only one? Are you certain it wasn't missed in the cargo sweep?"

Tribeca shook her head.

"No, ma'am. It was the N4 ACC."

"That would be hard to overlook," Fate admitted. A forty-ton armored vehicle was not something that could be tucked away in a corner. "Is there any sign of what happened to it?"

The captain nodded.

"Yes, ma'am. The _Triton_'s trip log hadn't been doctored—yet—so we found that it had dropped out of dimensional space approximately thirteen hours ago for a period of forty-five minutes. A couple of the hands admitted offloading a cargo container there which _could_ have contained the N4. Since they left it on an uninhabited dwarf planet, they were convinced that it had to do with under-the-table business, but they didn't ask questions. Typical dead-drop scenario, to keep the _Triton_'s crew unable to identify the next ship in the chain."

Fate nodded.

"Check it out on your way back. Even if they're telling the truth, it's probably been picked up by now, but we might get lucky."

"Yes, ma'am. I'll contact you when we find anything."

The screen phased out, and Fate turned back to the Deputy Commander of Police. If anything, the DCP was squirming even more uncomfortably—which was understandable, given the political influence held by the Tiburon group on Jarentil. A corporation with wide-area dimensional influence, a major TSAB military contractor, quite probably outweighed the entire Jarentil federal government in economic scope. The DCP knew well that if it hadn't been for Cobalt's jurisdictional chest-pounding, the _Triton_ could have been taken before it left port.

"I need to talk to Routan."

"He's being transported to secure holding for—"

"Then bring him back," Fate cut her off. "He's the only Enclave member we have in custody, which means he's also the only lead we have to where that APC is ending up." _Really, it _is_ like being a mom, except that Vivio was brighter at age six than these people!_

~X X X~

"And that's when he asked me out!" Jenna crowed, squealing. Vivio grinned at the pink-haired girl.

"So what did you say?"

"I said I'd think about it."

"What? You've been eyeing him all _semester_!"

"Yeah, but..." Jenna tapped her fingers together nervously. "The festival dance is a really big deal for a first date, you know. I'd kind of like to ease into things, if you know what I mean. And besides, I don't have anything to wear."

"You could borrow my green dress. It'd look great on you!"

"Um, yeah, if you took it in about three sizes and I wore an inflatable bra, maybe."

Vivio blushed. Vita's occasional jokes about it being a good thing she'd been building Vivio's back muscles all these years were bad enough. It's not like she'd _asked_ for a figure that said "porn star" instead of "battle mage"!

"Geez, Jen."

"Sorry," her friend said with a grin that said she wasn't sorry at all. "I'll think about it, anyway. Hey, want to get a drink?"

"Sure. I'd pay, but my wallet sticks up for my chest's honor."

"Spoilsport."

Vivio stuck her tongue out, feeling well repaid as they stopped at the first vending machine they passed. She went ahead and fed in change for two drinks anyway before Jenna could object; between her pay as an associate librarian at the Infinite Library and her OCS cadet's stipend she tended to have more spending money than her friends. She punched in the code for a hot caramel milk, collected the can when it dropped, then stepped aside for Jenna.

"Geez, Vi, you didn't have to pay."

"You're welcome."

"I'm going to return the favor next time, though."

"Sure, though—hey!"

"What is it?"

Vivio pointed at the shop window the vending machine stood next to. It was an electronics store, and Hayate's face stared out at passerby in a variety of resolutions from a display of media centers.

"Aunt Hayate. I forgot her speech was today. Can we check it out?"

"Sure. Maybe those PoliSci classes will finally be relevant outside school."

They went into the store, where they found that the displays were all silent, so as not to disturb customers.

"Um, excuse me," Vivio asked the clerk, "but would you mind turning that up? My friend and I would like to hear what General Yagami is saying."

"What, does this look like a theater?" the woman snapped, then turned to face them. "I tell you, kids don't have—" She suddenly broke off, staring at Vivio like she'd seen a ghost. Vivio glanced down and saw that the clerk was wearing a Belka Kreuz, the Saint Church's holy symbol. At once, irritation was replaced by a look of abject shame on the woman's face. "Your Majesty, I...I had no idea. Please forgive my terrible disrespect!"

Vivio barely suppressed a wince.

"It's all right. Come on, Jenna, let's go. I'll have Parsifal download it later."

"Okay..."

They left the shop and walked along for about a block in silence.

"Man, I wish people would think of your feelings sometimes before doing that," Jenna finally said.

"My friends do," Vivio answered. "That's what's important."

"Yeah, but even so! You _hate_ that 'living-god' routine. Not that I'm sure _why_, but if you don't want to be Your Majestied all over the place, than that ought to be that, right? The Church ought to put out a proclamation or something."

"Would it do any good? Even in school, some of the Sisters go around calling me 'Your Majesty.' You can try all you want, but people don't let go of the expectations they have of you. After all, the _real_ me only matters to me and to the people who genuinely care. For the average person, the me they _want_ me to be is the only one relevant to their lives, so of course it's more important to them than my real self."

"Well, geez, that's a depressing thought."

Vivio popped the tab on her drink can.

"Nah, depressing would be if I _expected_ them to change, then got all upset that they didn't. Nanoha-mama always says that if you don't know people's true feelings, you can't help anybody."

"Wow," Jenna mused. "The best motherly wisdom I ever got was to empty my pockets before doing the laundry."

~X X X~

"Wide-area dimensional criminal Alexis Routan," Fate recited. "Born on Administered Planet 14, recruited by Veryon Corporation after high school and enrolled in an undergraduate mage-training program. After graduation, worked in corporate security while reaching A- ranking in magic. Nine years ago, you abruptly disappeared, then were next encountered seven years ago as a suspected associate of the criminal syndicate Aldorous Enclave, with which you've been affiliated ever since." She cleared the screen.

"_Suspected_ to be associated, please, Enforcer. If your records are so thorough, you'll note I've never been convicted of any crime. Indeed, I've only been arrested once and that on local charges."

"And now we have the testimony of myself and three Jarentil Federal Police agents plus audio and visual recordings showing you involved in the trafficking of banned mass-weapons, resisting arrest, attempted murder of a TSAB officer, conspiracy to murder planetary law officers, and common burglary. I thought you said you weren't interested in what you called the 'hero/villain waltz,' Routan?"

Routan glared at her. Fate wondered if he was just mad at her for being the law, or if some of it was at himself for slipping into the kind of generic bad-guy banter Javelin had been tossing off.

"If your case is so solid, then quit wasting both our time with this talk. I want my communication rights and access to counsel."

"Which you'll get after being formally remanded to TSAB custody. As yet you're still in JFP holding awaiting transfer."

"You aren't local."

"True, but I can't have you transferred to a TSAB vessel until it gets back from chasing down your smuggled goods, the ones you managed to ship off-planet yesterday when you got wind of the sting JFP was going to launch. Therefore you're still being held by local authorities despite my presence. Technically they arrested you while you were unconscious. If you'd surrendered peacefully into my custody, you'd have your legal rights as a prisoner already."

Over a dozen years as an Enforcer had taught Fate where the lines were and how to play around the edge of them. If the _Arista_ had been sitting in port, any halfway competent counsel would have gotten the transfer delay marked as an illegal restraint and anything Fate gained from this interview would be tossed out of court, even given Routan's sharply curtailed legal rights due to his resisting arrest. But since the ship was legitimately chasing down stolen goods...

Since Routan's glower just got worse, Fate suspected that _his_ years as a _criminal_ had taught him the same lessons.

"What do you want?" he said.

"Your buyers. Aldorous Enclave doesn't fight wars. Maybe some of the small arms were for your people, but the majority of what Javelin got for you is going to someone else, just like you gave those Orusian weapons to Javelin in part payment for what he got you." She opened a screen containing the list of what Tiburon Heavy Industries had lost. "Who are these items for?"

"Enforcer, do you seriously think I'd tell you if I knew anything?"

"Cooperation with the investigation could lead to a reduced sentence."

"From what I hear, it could lead to a _really_ reduced sentence," he snapped back, "such as maybe a week before someone decided that it was time for another squealer to have an accident with a sharp object."

There was a certain logic to that.

"Besides," he went on, "let's say hypothetically that you're right about all this."

"Hypothetically."

"What makes you think that I know anything anyway? The Aldorous Enclave is a big organization. If—again, _if—_I was here to buy stuff from Javelin, I'd be sending it on through channels, not riding herd on it myself."

"Maybe not all of it, but this you would."

Fate pointed to the screen. The line-item for the N4 lit up, then expanded into the item specs.

"The N4 'Nest' armored communications carrier. More accurately, a field command vehicle developed under contract with the TSAB Ground Forces." The N4 was basically designed as a forward command post capable of crossing a variety of terrain at speeds approaching seventy miles per hour. Purely magic-sourced from an internal powerplant, it featured a communications suite capable of surface-to-orbital broadcast ranges, extensive computer analysis capabilities, full sensory gear, and defenses that combined physical armor with barrier-type magical protection, and layered both beneath a projected anti-magic field. No doubt based on Jail Scaglietti's research, the N4's AMF snuffed out low-level magical attacks before they even got near the vehicle and would have a negative effect on even those attacks powerful enough to penetrate it. Fate thought some of her own attacks at full S+ power level would be able to damage or destroy an N4, but not the vast majority of battle mages or field artillery. Essentially, it was Cobalt's surveillance van on steroids, designed to let commanders who were very often non-mages run field operations _from_ the field. "You didn't acquire this because the syndicate's boss wants a new car and limousines bore him. I want to know who wants one of the TSAB's latest war toys."

"Again, Enforcer, I don't see how I could help you."

"Because unlike everything else, which was being taken by the _Triton_ to its next destination under false manifests, the N4 has already been delivered. Someone had to set that delivery up and given the nature of the merchandise it had to be prepared well in advance, which means that you had to be involved. It really is that simple, Routan. Tell me the reason for the sudden drop-off, who's picking it up, and where it's going."

"I have no idea."

"We have other ways of finding out."

"You mean, mind-probing spells? I don't think so. Their use is authorized only in a state of emergency in the event of an imminent threat." Routan's gaze narrowed. "Quit wasting my time, Enforcer. I know my rights and I know that you know. Yes, we're both aware that you _could_, if so inclined, use all kinds of underhanded and illegal methods of persuasion on me, then lie through your teeth about it later. We also know that you _won't_, for two reasons."

Fate quirked an eyebrow at him.

"Really?"

"Firstly, despite popular press, the majority of the TSAB is not made up of murderous conspirators who routinely butcher the innocent in the name of some nebulous 'greater good' or just for your own ambition. Odds are, you won't cross moral lines without an immediate and pressing reason to do so. Secondly, you're sitting inside JFP facilities and they'd figure it was a gift from God if you started putting a foot wrong because it'll give them ammo to counter their own screw-ups bureaucratically."

And of course, he was right.

"You do realize that if that Nest is used in a military action against the TSAB then you'll be guilty of a treasonous conspiracy. You'll never see the light of day again; that's life imprisonment, time-dilated solitary confinement. _Centuries_ in a hole by yourself."

He sounded cool, even smooth as he made his reply.

"I told you, I've got nothing to say."

But it was too late.

She'd seen it, not even so much as a flinch, but a momentary flicker of doubt that clouded his gaze. Wherever the N4 was being transferred to, something had told Routan that it wasn't likely to be for helping settle some local civil war.

"We'll talk again," she said, then left the interview room and found an empty office.

"Bardiche, open a secure communications channel to the Enforcement Bureau's regional directorate, priority yellow."

**"Yes, sir."**

There was a slight delay as her device navigated to the interdimensional military communications network. Fate was thankful that she was on Jarentil instead of a non-administered world where direct communications would have been impossible. She still recalled how annoying it had been as a child having to exchange video letters with Nanoha instead of talking directly.

The screen opened after about forty seconds.

"Enforcer Harlaown."

"Sub-director," Fate answered, saluting the gray-haired man.

"You have a priority alert on the Jarentil assignment?"

She nodded.

"Yes, sir. The Aldorous Enclave succeeded in extracting a single piece of military equipment from Tiburon Heavy Industries." She quickly brought him up to speed on what the N4 was and how the _Triton_ had deposited it at a dead-drop point. "If we're lucky, it'll still be there for the _Arista_ to retrieve, but I have doubts. Military vehicles costing in the tens of millions aren't left to chance."

"I agree."

"I'd like the regional directorate to initiate a search on all spatial and dimensional transit for the area: what ships were in range to be able to deviate from their stated courses to make the pickup and where they went." It wasn't something Fate could do herself; the manpower requirements and the number of different ports involved required that she refer the investigation upstairs.

"That would be possible. Tell me, though; why have you classified this as a yellow-priority request?"

"I don't have any information indicating immediate danger or threat—yet—that would justify red status. The time-sensitive nature of the investigation means that the longer we wait the more likely it is the container will vanish into smuggling channels and be lost to us until it reaches its destination or if we can get very lucky."

"And besides that?"

Fate bit her lip.

"Sub-director, if someone goes to the trouble to acquire a state-of-the-art military command vehicle, they do it with something specific in mind. I have no idea who it is or what they intend, but I'm certain it's something better stopped now, before it has a chance to begin. I don't want to wait to find out what they're up to when it actually happens."

~X X X~

_A/N: Vivio's thoughts about her figure are, of course, a shout-out to Satashi and the fic "PS!Vivio." The offhand reference to "time-dilated" solitary confinement, on the other hand, is a wink-and-a-nod to the Season 1 reference where the TSAB talks about Fate's sentence possibly being in "centuries."_


	7. Chapter VI

Jacquelyn Solstice was smiling. Sonoma didn't see that very often, and it usually meant something bad for someone.

"You look pleased," he remarked.

"I am."

The drumbeat of music from the dance floor above them reverberated through the walls. Sonoma could hear the lead singer of the live band wailing about the futility of love, or possibly the desire to grow up; it was hard to tell, the metaphors tended to be mixed and were broken up by instrumental stretches that let the clientele concentrate on their feet and each other. He'd caught sight of the band on the way in and dismissed them as irrelevant. A club like this, made from a converted industrial plant and catering to the allegedly "edgy" crowd of early-twenties outsiders, was as good as they were ever going to get.

They served their purpose, though. The club's existence, after all, was primarily to disguise the fact that a number of people like Sonoma routinely came and went. Try that at a residence and someone's grandmother would be on to the phone to the cops within a week. Then they'd have to waste their time killing a police patrol, sanitizing the location, and moving somewhere else. They'd been operating freely out of the Steel Room for thirteen months without a hint of raising an official flag.

"Good news from Jarentil?"

She nodded.

"The Nest came off-planet without trouble and onto the rails of _sub rosa_ commerce. It should be here by the appointed day."

"I can see why you're smiling."

"Apparently it was a close shave. The _Enforcers_"—she infused the word with a bitterness that was hard to associate with a woman, a girl really, of her youth—"had been called in by Tiburon to investigate the diversion of arms, and rather quickly traced it to the perpetrators."

"If the TSAB military wasn't good at its job, then there'd be no point in hating it." The stupid had only themselves to blame for the results of their stupidity.

"You sound like you respect them." The snapping response reminded Sonoma of just how young she was.

"No. I merely acknowledge my enemy's actual capacity, so as to better prepare to defeat them. Condemn their morality all you like; just never trick yourself into thinking that virtue necessarily provides strength." In Sonoma's experience, people who claimed that purity of purpose led to inevitable victory were either delusional idealists or deliberately lying. "That's beside the point, though." He forced a smile onto his face. "How did we get the Nest out?"

Solstice returned the smile and even chuckled.

"That's what's so priceless. The mighty TSAB was thwarted by a local government. In this case, Jarentil's police wanted the credit for solving the crime, so they stalled and launched their own sting. The Enclave's local contact had the usual spies inside the police, learned what was happening, and moved the product offworld. Apparently the TSAB did catch the ship with the smuggled goods, but our precautions with the Nest paid off; it had already been delivered to the next link in the chain." She turned to the third person in the room, who had until then been slouched quietly against the wall, sipping a beer. "We have you to thank for that, Pacer."

Barthus Pacer shrugged. In his mid-thirties, he was a big man, his shaved head covered by a black bandanna and his arms left bare by a khaki vest. Tattoos spiraled up those arms, broken between wrists and shoulders only by an eight-inch burn scar on his upper right arm.

Sonoma knew how Pacer had gotten the scar, and it wasn't in his twenty years of service with the shady side of interdimensional transport. He'd picked it up at the age of thirteen, trying to shield his mother from the blast of a fire spell. It was the same year Solstice's father and grandparents had been killed, before she'd ever had a chance to meet them. The same year Sonoma's wife had died in his arms, bleeding out from the shrapnel hits that had torn away her belly, just an innocent bystander when the government boot had come down on what it called criminals and terrorists.

That was the tie that bound them together. They'd all lost something that year. For some it was direct and personal: loved ones lost, lives destroyed. For others, especially the ones who were too young for the actual rebellion, it was primarily ideological: either from the hopes and dreams that were destroyed or the sheer rage that grew out of knowing that evil had gained the upper hand over the place where your bloodline and culture grew from.

On some level it surprised Sonoma that he himself still cared about such things. The years had worn off the ideals, instilled him with a bone-deep cynicism and an almost bitterly pragmatic attitude towards operational protocol. But the core of it, the burning flame in his gut that had set him on this road, was still there, as bright as ever.

_Hate._

One thing had changed, though. In his youth, he'd hated the government and the TSAB equally. As time passed, that attitude had shifted. After all, the bloody-minded despots had never, except in the most comical way, ever claimed to be anything other than the petty tin dictators that they were. The Time-Space Administrative Bureau, though, was supposed to be better than that. _They_ claimed to be upholding ideals, defending the worlds against the kind of violence and injustice that had claimed so many lives in the past. Reality had fallen far short of that aspiration-and while despots died or were killed, the TSAB kept on going, spreading its breed of lies onto further generations.

But now, finally, there would be vengeance. Sonoma was not innocent enough to call it justice, no, though Solstice probably would as would many of their fellow members. It was merely revenge, the desire to hurt as many of them as was conceivable. No, it wasn't justice—but it was enough. Nothing could restore the beloved dead, but at least they'd soon have company.

~X X X~

Lieutenant Colonel Takamachi Nanoha was a woman of wide reputation. As Senior Combat Instructor for the Air Force, she was beloved by her students, who would have flown through fire for her. That association wouldn't have impressed the cadets who _hadn't_ had her classes yet, since they all thought the "White Devil" routinely set her students on fire during training anyway so it would have been old hat for the graduates. In her youth she'd been dubbed the "Ace of Aces" for her combat skills, sheer magical power, and record of success against all odds, and was often thought of as such by the general population. The one thing that united all those reputations was that they told of someone who was larger than life, whether as hero or villain.

Knowing that just made Vivio grin all the more to see her mama bouncing girlishly on the balls of her feet in anticipation.

"_Arista_ confirmed ready for transport," came the aggressively chirpy voice over the loudspeaker. "Please keep the arrival area clear for your own safety."

In the next instant the arrival pad shimmered, then the glow expanded, becoming almost painful to look at before vanishing, leaving Fate standing on the platform, a single suitcase by her side.

"Fate-chan!" Nanoha squealed, launched herself across the room, and glomped onto the Enforcer in a full-body squeeze. Fate staggered slightly, but long experience with the act let her catch her balance without falling. Vivio giggled, but Fate just let her arms close around Nanoha's waist, buried her face against the other woman's brown hair, and softly whispered in her ear.

"I'm home."

They remained that way for about thirty seconds before Vivio invoked a teenager's right to butt in when her parents were getting lovey-dovey.

"Hey, hey, stop hogging Fate-mama. Other people want to hug her, too!"

Fate blushed slightly; Nanoha didn't, but she did let go so Vivio could get a quick squeeze in.

"You're really growing up," Fate said, looking up at her daughter.

"Yeah, I did kind of hit a growth spurt this past year. Guess I was built for height. Which is good since I'm such a crappy flier. This way I can see over people's heads."

Fate chuckled. She was one of the few people who really understood Vivio's feelings when she had her occasional moments about being an artificial mage, simply because she was one, too. Indeed, it was Fate's successful creation that had generated the key breakthrough which had made Vivio possible, so that they were, in a scientific-provenance kind of way, genuinely family as well as by adoption.

"I wasn't expecting that you'd changed so much; it doesn't really stand out on a video screen."

"Yeah, and now I can't wear half your clothes any more."

"Nanoha, you're still letting Vivio raid my closet?"

"Hey, your stuff gets lonely when you're on deployment, and none of it fits _me_," Nanoha protested. "And besides, if you really cared you'd take it with you. You pack like a _guy_, Fate-chan."

"I do not!"

Nanoha pointed at her suitcase.

"_One_ suitcase for a ten-month deployment? I rest my case."

"I spend ninety percent of my time in my uniform or Barrier Jacket. Besides, it isn't any fun to dress up without you to see me," she added, blushing again.

"Aw, that's so _sweet_!"

"Okay, mamas, break it up."

"In a minute," Nanoha said, and gave Fate a warm hello kiss. Vivio sighed, but smiled. It was nice, honestly, that they still cared for each other after all that time. So many of her friends' parents, after all, had ended up divorced, so she was glad that hers were still together and happy.

"Minute's up. So what did you bring us, Fate-mama?"

Fate chuckled, then held out her hand, palm up, and worked a minor transportation spell to apport two packages out of her suitcase. One had silver paper and a blue ribbon, the other dark blue paper with a double red and green ribbon.

"Gee, I wonder which one's mine?" Nanoha joked, and Fate stuck her tongue out at the brunette.

"Be nice or I won't give it to you."

"But I thought you _liked_ me to be naughty, Fate-chan."

"Nanoha-mama!"

"You're old enough to know that your mamas do adult things, Vivio," Nanoha said shamelessly.

"Oh, God, why me?"

"Maybe this will help get the image out of your head?" Fate offered, extending the gift. Vivio tore into it eagerly, and her eyes lit up when she found a book inside, bound in elaborately tooled dark green leather with the title in gilt lettering: _Mid-Childan Economic Cycles and Their Effects on TSAB Policy_.

"Fate-mama, thank you!" Vivio exclaimed. "This just came out last month and I haven't seen a copy anywhere, even at the Infinity Library!"

"Try the university bookstores next time. Publishers always figure that scholarly works sell best to scholars," Nanoha advised.

"Yuuno's going to be so jealous! I'll have to lend it to him when I'm done," Vivio said, speaking of Yuuno Scrya, who was both Nanoha's closest friend and the head librarian at the Infinity Library. During Fate's extended absences, Yuuno had been almost like a father to her, providing valuable fill-in support for Nanoha in child-rearing. He'd also been the one to encourage her taste in history, sociology, and economics; once she'd displayed an interest it had been off to the races. To Vivio, even the dryest of scholarly writing couldn't conceal the fact that these were the greatest stories ever told, with a cast of millions and events that affected people even today.

Vita always thought it was hilarious that a combat mage whose basic tactical approach was "keep hitting me until you break your fist" was such a nerd, but there it was. Indeed, that was the major reason why Vivio kept on at the Saint Church's school and put up with the regular outbursts of religious feeling: they had by far the best educational program of any high school in anything doing with Ancient Belka. Her courses were basically university-level, and once she entered full-time service with the TSAB she wouldn't be able to attend college.

"Did I get a book too?" Nanoha asked. "Does it have pictures of you?"

"Should I wait in the car?" Vivio sighed, while Fate bonked Nanoha on the head with her gift.

"...Sorry."

"You're forgiven, but only because you're cute. Here you go."

Nanoha opened her present, which turned out to be a Jarentian delicacy, a kind of smoked twin-tailed shellfish.

"These look good!"

"They are, but they're really spicy, so watch out."

"Mmn!" Nanoha answered, making her family smile.

Nanoha reached for Fate's suitcase, but Vivio got to it first.

"Nope, Mama, I'm the biggest, so I'll do the heavy lifting. Besides, what's the point of having a teenager if you can't get any work out of her?"

"Thanks, Vivio; you're very kind," Fate said.

"Proper parenting," Nanoha asserted.

"Although sarcastic."

"That part was mostly Vita-chan."

"I see," Fate said, smiling while Vivio just groaned.

They started on their way out, Nanoha and Fate side-by-side while Vivio trailed along.

"So what else is new since I left?"

"Not much, really. The Jettas' dog had her puppies; they're really cute."

"Shamal's learning to cook," Vivio put in. "I scoffed a great sesame-garlic breadstick recipe off her that I'm hoping we could make together."

"That sounds like fun," Fate said.

"Chrono and Amy threw a big retirement bash for Admiral Letti, who got mad and threatened to court-martial whomever it was started the rumor that she was retiring. Subaru was given the Distinguished Service Award for her work with that cruise ship sinking last month."

"Oh, I read some news stories about that. Wasn't she essentially personally responsible for saving one hundred seventy-three people?"

"Mmn. I'm really proud of her! Oh, and Hayate got promoted again."

"You told me about that. I think she and Chrono-niichan are having a race."

"No, I mean again."

"But she just made three-star!"

Nanoha nodded.

"Well, it's not so much a promotion in rank as it is in position. They gave her a new assignment."

"Oh? What?"

"Actually, she's lord and master of all you survey."

"What...they made her Capital City Defense Forces Commander?"

"That's right! Technically she's even _my_ boss, now, since the instructional facilities are part of the Cranagan base complex."

Fate shook her head in disbelief.

"If she keeps this up, she could be commanding the Ground Forces by the time she's forty."

"Well, she didn't say so, but I'm getting the feeling that's what the Marshal has in mind. When he steps down, he _wants_ someone who can hold the job for decades on end like he has."

"That makes sense."

They reached the doors and stepped out into the sun.

"I'll go get the car," Nanoha said. "Don't have too much fun without me!" She dashed off towards the parking lot.

"So," Fate said, "since we've covered the hellos and the gifts and the bad jokes about my love life, what about yours? Have you met any cute guys you haven't told Nanoha about?"

"Well...maybe a couple." Vivio grinned. "There's a big dance coming up at school and two guys have asked me out, but I'm not sure yet which way I'm leaning."

"Let me guess, one bad boy and one nice guy?"

"Mmn, sort of. The nice one's actually the aerochase team captain, but yeah, we met because we're in Advanced Government Theory together and we argued the teacher's lecture all through lunch."

"And the other one?"

Vivio's grin grew.

"He's seventeen and he street-races motorcycles."

"I can guess why you haven't told Nanoha about _him_." Their eyes met and they both laughed.

It was kind of odd, really, Vivio thought. She could _never_ have had this kind of conversation with Nanoha, but along the way, probably when she was nine or ten or in there somewhere, her relationship with Fate had shifted. Probably it was because Fate was only there about two months out of each year. It was funny, because Fate was probably the most maternal person she knew, but they really didn't interact like a mother and daughter anymore. It was more like Fate was a really close big sister: still loving, but without the parent-child power-and-responsibility dynamic.

"Do you want my advice?" Fate asked. Unlike Nanoha, she really would keep it to herself if Vivio wanted her to.

Vivio thought about it.

"Okay."

"Are you at all serious about either one?"

"I'm not really sure..."

"If you're not and this is strictly a fun date, go for the motorcycle boy. If you're considering them as boyfriend material, pick the nice guy. He'll require more training, but his first instinct will be to find ways to make _your _toes curl up."

Vivio blushed.

_"Fate-mama!"_

"Just remember, the bad boys are hot and exciting, but only up to the point where you need them to think of you as more than an accessory to their lives and egos."

"You don't know him! You don't know that he's like that."

"If he's a nice guy who just happens to like motorcycle racing, he's in a different category. You're the one who said he was a bad-boy."

_Darn it, she's right_.

"I can't believe I'm taking boy advice from my lesbian mom."

Fate just grinned, recognizing the grumble for the admission it was.

"You could ask your bisexual mom, but she'd just tell you that you're too young for dating and should check back when you're eighty."

"True. Thanks, Fate-mama."

A loud honk cut through the warmth of the moment. Nanoha waved at them out of the driver's side window.

"C'mon! If we don't get home soon we won't be able to celebrate Fate-chan's return by having her cook dinner for us!"

~X X X~

_A/N: Those of you who have read "Caramel Milk" already know that Vivio should have paid a little more attention to Fate-mama's love advice!_


	8. Chapter VII

"Okay, kiddo, let's go," Eileen McLaren called.

"Mom, I can't find my hat!" her seven-year-old shouted, a trace of a whine infecting his voice.

"You probably left it at school again, Billy." She thought for a moment. "You weren't wearing it when I picked you up yesterday."

"But Mom, I know I had it in my bag!"

"That's what you said the last three times you left it at school. Now grab your coat and let's get going."

"But—"

"No buts! You're going to be late!"

He snagged his coat off the rack and tucked his arms in, then fumbled with the zipper. Eileen saw that he'd knocked the collar of his school uniform askew, so she adjusted it, then handed Billy his lunch box.

"Okay, let's go."

They left the house and went out to the driveway where their minivan sat waiting, its red color a cheery welcome in the morning sun. They got into the front seats, and Billy immediately reached for the music player.

"Seat belt," Eileen chided him, and he reluctantly pulled the strap into place. His face was full of "You're no fun, Mom," but having already lost the hat discussion he was smart enough not to push things any further, particularly when she was in the process of working her own seat belt around her seven-months-pregnant belly. Eileen loved children and wanted at least three of her own, but figured that the process of having them had to be some special penance ordained by God. Maybe it was to balance things against the blessings of motherhood?

"So, is anything special happening today?" she asked her son as they pulled out onto the street.

"Nah, not much. The magic class is studying basic power channeling, and we're going to have a math quiz at the end of the week." He pouted. "I hate multiplication! Why do we hafta learn that stuff?"

"Because it's important."

"Nuh-uh!" he said truculently.

"You only think that because you don't know how to do it. The fact is that math is one of the most important things you can learn in your life. I use it every single day."

Eileen spent the next five minutes of the drive explaining how the skills Billy was learning in math class actually were important in day-to-day life. Turning the discussion to metroball statistics helped immensely, and she could tell he was warming to the theme when they were interrupted. A car was parked by the side of the road, its hood up, and as the van neared a young woman stepped out, not _quite_ in the street, and waved frantically at them. Eileen took in the appearance of the car—a green sedan, relatively new, about one step down from a luxury model—and the woman—early twenties at most, wearing a blue blouse and white skirt—and slowed to a stop. The woman came up to the driver's side door and Eileen lowered the window.

"Oh, thank Her Majesty you stopped," the blonde said. "My car broke down, today of all days! I've called the auto club already, but they have to come in from town and won't be here for half an hour, and I'm going to be terribly late as it is! I know it's an imposition, but...can you offer me a lift?"

"Where are you going?"

"The Altima Law Offices? I'm the broker for a home sale taking place there this morning, you see. It's about ten minutes from here, right across from the church school?"

That settled it for Eileen.

"You're in luck; I'm taking my son to school right now." She keyed the button to unlock the side door. "Please get in."

"Thanks! You're a lifesaver!"

She slid back the door and stepped inside, followed immediately by two men dressed like street toughs. _Where did they come from?_

Billy let out a startled yelp and one of the men fired an ANT at him, the magical blast making him slump over in his seat, unconscious.

"Billy!" Eileen screamed, and reached for the car's alarm beacon, but the blonde woman's next words made her stop instantly.

"I wouldn't try that." A ring on the woman's finger flashed, then vanished, leaving her holding a short, almost generic-looking wooden rod, the tip of which she jabbed into Eileen's ribs. The mother winced, knowing a mage device when she saw it. "There hasn't been a lot of testing on the effects of magic damage on the unborn, and I'm sure that you don't want to be a test case, mmm?"

"W-what do you want?"

"I _want_ you to shut up and listen. If you cooperate, we can do this cleanly and easily, without anyone having to get hurt. If you don't...well, that's the chance you'll have to take."

Eileen flinched. The mage glanced over at the unconscious Billy, and her lips curved up thinly. "You know, I don't think he's really in any shape to be going to school today. I suggest that you call them and let them know that he'll probably be out sick for a couple of days. After that, you and he can get in the back of the van. We're going for a little ride."

Whimpering, Eileen nodded. She started to open a communications link to the school, but the mage jabbed her again.

"Not yet. We can't have them noticing that you have extra passengers." She held up her device. "Crystal Mirage!"

They were gone.

"Now, call," the woman's voice came out of thin air, "and be sure that you put your heart into it."

_Illusion magic_, Eileen realized. That was how the mage had hidden the two thugs until it was too late. No, more than that; when she looked forward she could see that the green sedan, that piece of middle-class respectability that had convinced her to stop, was gone as well. Probably, it had never been there in the first place.

She took a deep breath, convinced that if she showed any more nervousness during the call than would be expected from a mother with a sick child that the woman or her thugs would blast her instantly. Unconsciously, her hand dropped protectively to her swelling abdomen.

She opened the link.

~X X X~

Fate leaned back in the recliner and let the scent of her second cup of hot coffee tease her nostrils with its promise of the rich taste to come. It felt so good to use her own kitchen again rather than having to eat in a naval vessel's galley. Her blissful state lasted only a few moments before the doorbell jarred her out of it, though.

"If that's a vacuum-cleaner salesman..." she muttered under her breath as she opened the image window which remotely showed her front step. Her eyebrows rose, and she went to the door at once.

"If I could have a moment of your time, ma'am, I'm sure you'll be excited by the new electronic encyclopedia, of interest to every housewife!"

"Come in, Hayate."

Fate reflected that they made an interesting pair, Hayate in her blue-and-white dress uniform and Fate in a fluffy black bathrobe and the bunny slippers Vivio had given her for Christmas nine years ago. She didn't care, and gave her old friend a huge hug once she was inside.

"You look nice," Fate said. "Blue suits you." She took Hayate's off-white trenchcoat and hung it up before showing her old friend into the house.

"I've only worn my brown uniform once since I took this job," Hayate admitted. "There's always something formal requiring my attention that needs the dress uniform. It makes me kind of self-conscious when I spend time in Long Arch's control center, though."

"Can I get you anything? Coffee, maybe?"

"Fate-chan's coffee? That would be great," she said with a blissful sigh.

Fate took Hayate into the kitchen, got down a clean mug, and filled it.

"Here you go. Just so the first sip doesn't surprise you, it's a hazelnut-mocha blend."

"Thanks for the warning." Hayate glanced at the cup. "Hey, this is Nanoha's 'Mother of the Year' mug. Isn't that her special one?"

"She switched to the one Vivio got her this last Christmas, the one that's printed with a photo of the three of us together."

"Oh, I see. Well, my kids hopefully won't think it's too arrogant of me." While Hayate didn't have children of her own, Fate knew that she thought of Rein and the Wolkenritter that way, despite the fact that her guardian knights were centuries older than she was. "Ah, this is heavenly."

"I'm sorry that Nanoha and Vivio aren't here, too, but they left a while ago."

Hayate smiled.

"Vivio reminds me so much of the two of you. Training with Vita in the morning, school through the normal day from nine to three-thirty, and OCS classes for two hours a day four days a week." Since the TSAB had so many mage-talented officer cadets who were still school-age, they'd instituted the after-school OCS program to allow them to continue their full-time education while preparing for their careers. Fate, Hayate, and Nanoha had all gone through a variant of it themselves; it reminded the blonde Enforcer strongly of the Japanese cram schools many of her Uminari City classmates had attended after regular classes to help prepare them for high school and college entrance exams. Though in Vivio's case, it was more about learning the necessary skills for her future career since she'd chosen to stay with the educational benefits of the church school for her "regular" schooling rather than transfer to the TSAB cadet academy where she'd get both at once.

"She's not so obsessive about it as we were, though," Fate said. "She's more like you in that respect, dedicated but not driven." Fate paused. "Which reminds me, why are you here? You certainly didn't slip away from the office on a social call."

"Ah! You got me again, Conan-kun. The fact is, you're slotted into my appointment calendar: 'Interview with Fate T. Harlaown, 8:15-8:45.' My presence here is completely justified."

"Interview? Visiting your old friend is an interview, now?" Fate said with a grin.

"CCDF policy states that any candidate for a position shall be interviewed by the section chief or his/her appointed designate, and such interview shall be conducted face-to-face. The NLO answers to me directly, so that makes me the appropriate interviewer."

"NLO?" Fate fastened on the one question which had a specific answer.

"Oops, sorry for the acronym soup." Hayate looked embarrassed. "It stands for Naval Liason Officer, the person via whom I coordinate joint defense efforts with the Navy."

"Mid-based naval operations are parallel to CCDF authority," Fate pointed out.

"They are now. That needs to change. Mid-Childa is the central world of the TSAB and the base of the Council, even though the Administrative Bureau operations HQ is offworld. Theoretically my office is supposed to have absolute responsibility for the defense of Cranagan and, by extension, all Mid, and I have to put in a request through channels to get naval support. Our old friend Jail Scaglietti nearly achieved total control of Mid-Childa because CCDF lacked fleet assets. We can't count on Vita and Nanoha-chan going magical-girl superhero on every problem; it nearly killed both of them and Nanoha ended up permanently sacrificing eight percent of her magical capacity."

Fate nodded, still feeling the ghosts of old worry. Nanoha's recovery from that incident hadn't been easy. It had ended with Shamal slapping her power limiter back in place on medical authority to keep her from overdoing it and reinjuring herself.

"But why me? I'm an Enforcer, a field investigator, not a command-line officer."

"Try that on someone who didn't start out as an investigator herself, Fate-chan. Or I could mention your brother, who also started as an Enforcer before switching to a command position. Besides, we all know you chose the Enforcement Bureau because you like the black uniforms."

"That is _not _true."

"Oh? Says the woman wearing a black robe, black slippers, and oh, is that black lingerie I see peeking out?"

Fate looked down, face flushing, only to see that her robe was still properly closed.

"Gotcha," Hayate said. Fate groaned.

"In all seriousness, Fate-chan, if things go the way I want them to, the NLO is going to take on a sharply increased role because of the enhanced naval presence. I need someone in that position that I can trust absolutely, because we both know that regardless of its military value there will be those among the fleet who'll see this as an unconscionable power grab by the Ground Forces. You might not always agree with me and I know you'd say so to my face but you'd never start eying my back with a knife. Likewise, those Enforcer's instincts and training would go a long way towards sniffing out if the Navy had something political up their sleeves before it all hit the fan."

"I don't know what to say, Hayate."

"May I suggest 'yes,' then?"

"Hayate!"

The General giggled.

"You're so much more fun to tease than Nanoha-chan! Seriously, though, do think it over, but try to get back to me in the next couple of days with an answer. If you decide not to accept the position I'll need to find someone else for it quickly."

"All right."

"Thanks for the coffee. Rein tries her best, but there's only so much you can do with standard army-issue grounds. Signum says I've turned into a coffee snob since I became a captain."

Fate chuckled.

"You weren't _old_ enough for coffee before you became a captain," she pointed out.

"Then I'm glad that I'm not getting more snobbish with rank." She sighed and handed back her empty cup. "I'm sorry; I do need to get going to my next appointment. It's good to see you again, Fate-chan." The two friends shared another hug before Fate showed Hayate to the door. An official car with a uniformed driver was waiting for the general; Fate waited for the car to drive away before she closed the door.

_Liaison Officer, hm?_ she thought. It was an interesting offer; Hayate had a real habit of keeping her trusted friends close whenever possible. She was definitely a mother hen that way. Fate sometimes thought that was why Hayate kept flying up the ranks, because she sought the authority that would allow her to protect and care for the greatest number of people.

Still thinking about it, Fate strolled back into the kitchen, figuring that since she was home to do it she'd might as well clean up the breakfast dishes. One by one she rinsed them off and slotted them into the dishwasher, but she paused when she got to Nanoha's coffee mug. The photo printed there was one which showed Vivio in the middle, her two mamas snuggled up behind her, each with an arm over her shoulders. As she looked at the three faces smiling at the camera, Fate found her thoughts starting to go towards new possibilities.

~X X X~

_A/N: Yes, that was Otaku Girl Hayate making a Detective Conan reference._


	9. Chapter VIII

Tarrant Gallardo did not get along with Signum. It wasn't that she was unfriendly towards him—well, actually she was, but no more so than she was towards anyone else. He'd started off on the wrong foot with her with his remarks about knights, he was sure, which hadn't helped.

The bottom line, though, was that the Sword Team leader was a warrior down to her very bones and Gallardo was not. He was not a mage, for one thing. Put in the field with a weapon he'd likely embarrass himself. His area of expertise was administration and logistics, navigating the web of military bureaucracy to make sure it gave his unit what it needed, when it needed it. He'd been made General Taurus's aide because of those skills, while she fought to keep CCDF intact against the critics inside and outside the service who held it responsible for Regius Gaiz's misdeeds.

At first, he was excited to work for General Yagami. He'd been aware of her reputation and career: the only SS-ranked mage in the Ground Forces raised plenty of eyebrows even apart from her meteoric rise through the command staff. But he had to wonder what it was she needed from him, what agenda she expected him to work towards. Strengthening the CCDF was an admirable goal, but was it for Midchildan security, the benefit of the Ground Forces, or just the greater glory of Yagami Hayate? The fact that she basically towed around with her an elite cadre of top-flight officers made him wonder even more. Was it the result of an ongoing power play, or was there another reason why so many people at the top of their profession seemed to follow her as if they were bound by the same kind of oaths as Signum?

"So, you say that the Sword Team is at sixty percent operational capacity?" he asked. That was why he was talking with Signum; his job involved making sure that the various CCDF elements were meeting Yagami's goals. Oddly, Signum's special ops team was lagging behind its timeframe.

"Yes," she said flatly. No prevarications, no stammering, no excuses. That, he had to admit, he liked. You always knew where you stood with her.

"Why? The General wanted you to be ready for field operations by now."

"We _are_ ready for field operations," she corrected.

The apparent contradiction made Gallardo blink.

"I thought you just said—"

"Our facilities, logistical support, and Long Arch operations control are all mission-ready," she told him, then surprised him by adding a compliment. "I'm very pleased with the way you've set things up within the CCDF structure so quickly, considering that the Sword Team is a new unit."

"Oh. Um, thank you."

She gave him a tight little smile.

"To a soldier in the field, there are three kinds of operational and logistical support: the good, the bad, and the kind that's part of the enemy. A true knight knows not to scorn those who support her."

Gallardo wondered if she was speaking from experience.

"So then, why do you report the unit as only being at sixty percent of capacity?" he asked.

"Manpower. We could go into the field immediately but only for a limited selection of missions. Other than myself, there is only one A+ ranked mage and three As. Everyone else is B-ranked, which as you know is the minimum cutoff for a special-ops team without a direct dispensation. We're particularly weak in the area of specialists: support mages, healing mages, and so on."

Gallardo sighed, understanding her problem now.

"The classic trouble; the Ground Forces have always lagged behind the Navy and Air Force in elite combat mages. Most of the time we're a poor third choice. But we'll see what we can do."

She nodded slightly.

"Thank you."

He left Signum's office, relieved to be out of the sterile little box. No doubt that was one of the things that had unnerved him; there wasn't a single personal touch in the entire room, not even a change in the default furniture and lighting. Clearly she didn't consider it to be part of her personal space, or really even her workspace. _That_ would have been on the training ground, or in the field with her troops.

_Ah, well, we all have our jobs to do,_ he decided. _I'd be abysmal at hers and she'd be little better at mine._ The thought made him feel better as he entered notes on her situation into his report.

As he neared the elevators Gallardo saw someone coming out of a cross-corridor and realized that it was yet another person on his list of those to talk to.

"Hey, hold the elevator!" he called, hurtling forward just as the other man was stepping inside. The redhead immediately reached out and touched a control, keeping the doors open.

"Major Gallardo, you're going down?" he asked in surprise when the aide reached him. "I was just on my way to lunch."

"Actually, no; I just needed to talk with you, Captain McLaren. So does the fact I'm keeping you from the mess hall cafeteria count as a favor?"

McLaren grinned at him.

"Not today, sir. I'm having lunch with my wife!"

Gallardo smiled back.

"In that case, I'll do my best to cut this short. I need your section's operational-status capacity report by end-of-shift tomorrow. You're already late."

McLaren sighed.

"I know. Really, my guys are great but you can't imagine how hard it is to get them to think in terms of military protocol. Doesn't help that they're all straight-to-OCS recruits so they don't get the discipline benefits of boot camp. I figure only the lawyers have it worse, and those guys actually _like_ paperwork so they get their reports in. Don't worry, though. I'll have it for you even if I have to keelhaul somebody."

"Good. I'd hate to be late."

"The new boss is a real stickler?"

Gallardo shook his head, then said something that he definitely wouldn't have if McLaren hadn't been a long-time buddy from poker nights and metroball playoffs.

"Nah; I just don't want to look bad in front of her other aide. Getting chewed out by a device isn't high on my list of things to do!"

"Don't worry; I'm on it," McLaren replied, chuckling at the idea of Gallardo getting a dressing-down from Rein.

"Thanks. Tell Eileen hi for me."

"Will do."

The elevator doors swished shut.

~X X X~

The Brass Ring was an open-air café close enough to CCDF HQ that it was a popular stop for base personnel when they didn't feel like eating at the mess hall cafeteria or were meeting someone who didn't have clearance. The coffee and other beverages were excellent, the sandwiches and soups good if a little arty, and the pastries and desserts adequate although undistinguished.

McLaren sat in an uncomfortable wrought-iron chair at one of the round, glass-topped tables and watched the door. The call from his wife had been a nice surprise; she'd had some shopping to do in the city that brought her to the same area as the base and thought it might be nice to meet up with him for lunch. Even after eight years of marriage, Eileen was still his favorite person to spend time with.

She'd been a little distracted—not her usual chatty self—over the screen, but she certainly had a good excuse. For his part, McLaren figured that if men had to carry the children then the birth rate would be a lot lower! Seeing the miracle that had been their first child, he just hoped that he was able to do whatever he could to make the second one easier for Eileen to carry on a day-to-day basis.

For example, rather than being annoyed that his wife was uncharacteristically late—punctuality was elevated to a cardinal virtue with Eileen—he simply leaned back and ordered a couple of mocha lattes (decaf for her) so they'd be waiting when she arrived. He sipped his slowly while five minutes stretched into ten.

"Georg McLaren, I believe?" The voice was crisp, urbane, and male. "Captain McLaren, Capital City Defense Force Data Engineering Section, Systems Maintenance Group Supervisor?"

"Yes, that's me," he said, nonplused. He'd been surprised by the man and didn't want to talk to anyone but Eileen, both of which made him moodier than he might otherwise have been.

"Ah, good; you look just like your picture."

The man pulled out the chair opposite McLaren and sat down. He was tall and lean, with pale lavender hair, incongruously bright blue eyes, and an olive-tinted complexion.

"Hey, I'm waiting for someone!"

"Yes, I know. You might not know it, but you're waiting for me."

"I'm waiting for my wife," McLaren shot back. "Don't take it the wrong way, but you're not my type."

The blue-eyed man chuckled.

"Oh, no offense taken, but I'm afraid that you're wrong. I'm exactly your type at this moment. You see, I know exactly why your wife is late in meeting you."

He'd been meaning to capture McLaren's attention, and he got it. At once thoughts spun through the redhead's mind. If it was a routine delay, why couldn't she have just called? Similarly if she had to cancel. He thought at once of an emergency of some kind—an accident?—but ruled that out, too. Hospital staff or their sort would also have called; they didn't have the _time_ to run errands in person. And the blue-eyed man wasn't at all urgent in his manner; he was laconic, relaxed.

The combination made the hair on the back of McLaren's neck prickle. Something was wrong.

"Look, Mr.—"

"Sonoma," the man supplied.

"Mr. Sonoma, if you know anything, why not just come out and say it instead of beating around the bush?"

"Relax, Mr. McLaren. Believe me, you don't want to make any kind of scene. It's in your family's interest that you do."

_What about my family?_ he wanted to shout, to pound the table, to give voice to his fears and to his fury that this man should imply that he was holding some kind of influence over them.

He did not do so, though. The same worry that urged his tongue on also stilled it.

"Good," Sonoma said, watching the play of emotions across McLaren's expression and correctly deducing their course. "It's so much easier when we can just have a civilized talk." He picked up Eileen's latte and sipped it. "Not bad," he murmured approvingly. "I prefer tea, myself, but I can see why this café is so popular."

McLaren didn't touch his own drink; his gut was churning too viciously to consider putting anything else into his stomach.

"But small talk would be pointless," Sonoma continued, "so I'll tell you what you want to know. Your wife was taking your son to school this morning as usual, when she ran into a friend of mine. This friend persuaded her to go with her to a more private location, as well as to arrange this lunch date for us."

"Persuaded...?"

"A euphemism, as you guess. Would you prefer me to speak more bluntly?"

McLaren's right hand trembled; he dropped it into his lap where it flexed into a fist. That _damnably_ smooth, mocking voice, like Sonoma was chatting about the weather!

"If you've got something to say, say it!"

"If you insist. You're a smart man. You know what I'm talking about. 'Abducted' is the word you want, or perhaps 'kidnapped.' Both are accurate enough for our purposes."

"Ki—" he started to yelp, but stifled it at once. Raised voices would attract the attention of other diners, and it didn't take a genius to realize what the result would be if outsiders started getting involved. He settled back into his chair, only belatedly noticing that he'd started to stand up.

"That's right."

"But why? You know who I am. I'm nobody special, just a career military officer with an ordinary middle-class life. I can't pay ransom."

"But of course you can."

"I tell you I can't! If I cashed in all our investments, maxed out our available credit, I could raise—"

Sonoma waved him off.

"No, no; we're not interested in that at all, far from it. Set your mind at ease."

McLaren found it hard to imagine a more absurd request, and after a moment Sonoma seemed to as well, for he broke into an amused smile.

"Well, that would be a little much to expect, wouldn't it? My point is that you needn't worry that you're sacrificing Billy's college fund or your retirement savings that you've worked your whole life for. You see, it isn't who you are that interests us but _what_, Captain."

His use of McLaren's military rank couldn't have been coincidental. He meant to spur his victim's imagination and spur it he did.

"That's right, Captain. Systems Maintenance Group Supervisor. Your section is in charge of keeping CCDF's ever-so-vital electronic networks up to date and functioning, placing you in a perfect position to help us."

"No. There's no way I'm going to—"

"How ethical. Your son will be happy to know that his father is a righteous man. I'll be sure to tell your family all about how you chose your sworn duty as a TSAB military officer ahead of more...personal concerns."

He said it so smoothly, so casually, as if he was idly chatting about some inconsequential topic instead of the murder of a child and a pregnant woman. Maybe that was it—to him, it _was_ inconsequential, meaningless. Sonoma had actually begin to rise like he'd simply accepted McLaren's initial refusal as a final answer not even worth negotiating.

"No!" McLaren yelped suddenly, fear clawing at his belly.

Sonoma settled back into his seat. A faint smile played around his lips. _Smug bastard!_ But he had reason to be smug. He had McLaren over a barrel, and had just made the officer reveal just how much power he had over him.

"I mean," McLaren tried to reassert at least a bit of control, "how do I even know that you're telling the truth? That you really have them?"

Sonoma nodded to him, conceding the point.

"I understand, and you are quite right to say so. I'd hoped to spare you the distress, but such natural caution speaks well of you."

He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a small data unit, no larger than his thumb, which he set on the table and slid across to McLaren, who took it and pressed the single button. A postcard-sized screen appeared, and he quickly moved through the menu to see that it contained several images.

"You'll observe that those are RealImage-coded stills, so that you know they're taken from life, without illusion magic or alteration."

McLaren barely heard the calm assurances of the man. Indeed, he could barely take in the pictures as he flipped through them, only bits and pieces coming through clearly: concrete floors, bare pipes, brick walls, silver tape strapped over mouths, heavy steel manacles. The terrified face of a child. The tear-streaked face of a woman.

"Eileen..." he whispered. "Billy..."

Unable to bear it any longer, he blanked the screen and made to hand the data unit back to Sonoma, but the blue-eyed man waved him off.

"No, no, please, keep it. Consider it as...a memento to comfort yourself with while they're away."

He was being deliberately provocative, McLaren would only realize after the fact, seeking to provoke temper or resistance if his victim had any capacity left for it. The shock of the images had done its work, though; reality crashing in on McLaren had stripped him of his will to fight.

"What do you want?" he asked dully.

"It will be very simple. There's one item on that unit that isn't a picture. Simply install it in CCDF's network core during the next standard maintenance sweep—which I believe is tomorrow, is it not? Then just bring me what it gives you." Sonoma spread his hands, palms upward. "What could be easier?"

"How do I get...whatever it is to you?"

"By meeting your wife for lunch when she calls," he replied, making McLaren wince. "You know, you're right not to finish that," Sonoma added with a nod to the captain's half-full latte. "Caffeine just adds to the stress in our lives, don't you think?"

It was clearly an exit line, which he demonstrated a moment later by standing up. A young couple a few tables over mirrored his action, and McLaren realized as the three joined one another in hailing a taxi that Sonoma had had the café covered in case of nasty surprises. It had all been carefully planned out.

All McLaren could plan on was the whirlpool of anguish dragging him down.


	10. Chapter IX

Paperwork—whether or not on actual paper—was one of the universal constraints of any bureaucracy. As soon as systems got too big for one person to keep track of, records had to be kept so that the left hand could do what the right hand needed it to be doing. The bigger the bureaucracy, the greater the number of records. Indeed, the growth was geometric rather that arithmetic, because not only did each administrative office generate paperwork detailing its own activities, but additional paperwork was needed to document the internal connections between the different parts of the bureaucracy.

The TSAB was an interdimensional federation governing dozens of worlds scattered across not merely physical space but also alternate realities. There was a reason its central data center was called the _Infinity _Library.

Fate had an orderly mind that was naturally good at organizing and cross-referencing data. It was one of the reasons that she was the TSAB's top Enforcer; there was a lot more to the job than just being a powerful mage. Paperwork wasn't really a burden to her. And doing it not in the sterile confines of an office or a cabin on a naval vessel, but in her own home while snuggled into an overstuffed recliner...well, that was no chore at all.

"Care for a drink?"

She turned her head at the sound of Nanoha's voice. The brunette was carrying two steaming, handleless cups.

"Tea? That was sweet of you."

"I know it's after eleven, but I figured you intended to be up for another two or three hours anyway so the caffeine wouldn't ruin your night."

"Thanks." She accepted the cup gratefully.

"I made yours the way you like it, with milk and sugar." Nanoha pulled a face; the Japanese woman's tea sensibilities had never adapted to the Midchildan abuse of green tea. The expression made Fate smile.

"Aw, you sacrificed your principles for me?" she said and sipped. "It's perfect, too. Thanks."

"You're welcome."

Nanoha perched on the chair's broad, padded arm.

"It's really good having you home again, Fate-chan."

Fate rested her hand on Nanoha's, savoring the comforting warmth. They talked often when she was on deployment, but the feeling of closeness only genuine physical contact could bring was something else.

"It's good to be back."

She took Nanoha's hand and pressed it against her cheek.

"I always miss you so much when I'm away."

Fate turned and looked up into her one-and-only's face.

"Am I crazy, Nanoha?"

So many years together let Nanoha know exactly what she was talking about even without a complete explanation.

"No, I don't think so." Nanoha smiled playfully at her. "Then again, look who you're talking to."

"But you accepted responsibility for Vivio. You've stayed her with her like a mother should, being here for her every day, while I've been an absentee for most of her life. Yuuno's done more to raise her than I have, and Zafira, and later on Vita, too." She sighed. "Even my own kids, Erio and Caro—"

Nanoha shook her head.

"They're a different case, Fate-chan, and you know it. They'd tell you right to your face if they were here. You were way too young for children then, but you did everything that you could for them. Admiral Lindy didn't just choose to be their official guardian to help you, but because she saw the same things in them as you did and wanted to make sure they were properly raised. And after RF6 broke up, they went out into the world with the environmental protection squad, so _they _chose to go out on deployment away from home as much as _you_ had anything to do with it."

"Okay, you have a point," Fate conceded.

"You get maudlin when you sit around alone at night."

"It doesn't change the truth. We had a daughter to raise, and I chose to return to active duty as an Enforcer instead of requesting a transfer that would allow me to stay closer to home. They wouldn't necessarily have granted it to me, but the point is that I didn't ask."

"Fate-chan..."

She sipped at her tea, giving her a chance to collect her thoughts.

"Do you know what Vivio did when I came home yesterday?"

"Hugged you, squealed over her book, made a lot of snarky teenaged comments?"

"While you were off getting the car, she asked me for advice about boys."

"Ehh? Wait, she's not—"

Fate chuckled at Nanoha's sudden, wide-eyed discomfiture.

"Thereby explaining why she didn't go to _you_ for advice about boys." The smile faded almost as quickly as it came. "But that's just it. She's comfortable discussing those things with me. She doesn't talk about them like she would with a mom, but as if I were an older female friend—someone who could offer a better perspective on matters, but who'd look at the situation on her terms as a potential romance, not as someone trying to be protective of her."

"Oh," was all Nanoha said, but her face told the entire story, that she understood exactly what Fate was driving at—the sense of what had been lost.

"Do you know the worst of it?"

"The...worst?"

Fate smiled up at her, the old smile, the one that went with what a nine-year-old Nanoha had named "the girl with the sad eyes."

"I think that if I had the choice again, I'd do the same thing." She thought of her past, the things she'd done both alone and with her friends and allies: lost logia recovered or sealed, lives saved, people's happiness protected.

Maybe that was the biggest difference between the three friends. Nanoha helped people because it was impossible for her to have the power to do so and _not_ help them; it was a Calling. Hayate had a vision of the future and strove to achieve it for everyone's sake. As for Fate...

Fate didn't want anyone else to go through the things she had, to feel that sadness that had been her existence before Nanoha had come flying out of nowhere to offer her an entirely new world.

There were tears in her eyes, she realized.

"How awful does that make me?" she asked with a little sniffle.

Nanoha's arms were around her in the next moment.

"If you're looking for someone to tell you that you're a bad person for choosing important work over your own happiness, you're in the wrong family."

"Huh?"

"Remember which one of us _still_ has that damned power limiter in effect? Do you know what it says in my medical file? 'Subject is deemed psychologically incapable of restraining herself to a power level consistent with her continued well-being.' Remember how mad you were when it first happened and I was complaining about it?"

Fate smiled. She remembered how she'd wanted to logically discuss it with Nanoha only to have it dissolve almost at once into tearful screaming about the people who'd miss her if she pushed herself until she died and finally kissing the Ace of Aces into submission.

"I remember."

Nanoha nodded.

"So you see, I never resented your absences. I really missed you, but I wasn't angry at you. I was proud of you, that you were out there doing with your own hands the things that I wanted to do but couldn't."

She smiled warmly at Fate.

"We're really alike, Fate-chan. Both of us go diving into things, putting ourselves at risk for other people's happiness before our own. But you've always understood that about me, even when you were worried for me or angry at me: Fate-chan always knew in her heart what it meant for me, why I did the things that I did. And I understand you, too. I don't see how we could have stayed together as a couple for so long without that."

Fate sighed, not unhappily, because Nanoha was right.

"Then you know why I'm so torn about Hayate's offer?"

Nanoha nodded, then drank tea.

"Of course! But...I think you're thinking about it the wrong way."

"Oh?"

"Sure. You're saying, 'I can spend more time with my family _or_ do good things for people,' right? And trying to settle your priorities between them?"

"More or less. What am I missing?"

"You're missing what you can do _as_ Naval Liaison Officer. I mean, the job means something to Hayate-chan or she wouldn't ask you to do it. She'd want you available, sure, because she's Hayate-chan, but she also knows your talents and would want to get work out of them. She made Signum commander of CCDF's elite commando team, for example."

"I see..."

Nanoha nodded.

"For someone like us, we'll always value other people's concerns ahead of our personal concerns. But being NLO isn't just about giving you a job where you can be at home with us. It's a job for a high-ranking naval officer. Maybe it's just another way to help people." She paused, then grinned. "Besides, just because I _understand_ what drives you doesn't mean that I'd be against having 500-percent more Fate-chan in my life!"

Fate chuckled.

"Well, it's true that 500-percent more Nanoha and Vivio would certainly go well for me." A moment later she added, "Thank you, Nanoha. I did need a new perspective on things."

"Glad I could help. Do I get a kiss for that?"

It made Fate chuckle again.

"Yes, Nanoha, you get a kiss." She slid an arm around her first and only love's waist and pulled her in so their lips could touch. "Sorry about the milk tea breath."

Nanoha tugged gently at Fate's lower lip with her own.

"Funny, tasting it this way's giving me a new appreciation for it," she breathed huskily between kisses. She set her own teacup down on the nearest piece of furniture she could reach, then let herself slide off the chair arm into Fate's lap, and wrapped her arms around her wife's neck so she could kiss her properly.

~X X X~

Marcus Auburn had been in the interdimensional transport business for upwards of forty years, signing on as a deckhand to get away from an unhappy home and working his way up through the ranks with hard work and a hard-nosed pragmatism. This was a job, not a Sacred Calling, and his motivation was money, not some abstract ideal.

As the captain of his own freighter, he held closely to that principle. The beat-up old _Lagoon_ would have looked out of place in the glittering spaceport docks of places like Cranagan next to elite couriers and glossy cruise liners, but then again a fair number of his better-paying customers—particularly those whose payments went directly to Auburn and a few select members of his crew—preferred that their deliveries be made through the secondary and tertiary spaceports of various worlds. "Low profile" was as close to a creed as Auburn ever professed.

This job bothered even him, though. Shadowy deliveries were all well and good, but he was used to getting them from clients, not from other ships in the same business. And the captain of the _Hansel_ had let slip that _she'd_ picked the delivery up not from a client but at a dead-drop site on a deserted asteroid! Someone was going through an awful lot of trouble to conceal the source of this particular shipment, which meant that it wasn't the usual drugs, arms, or bulk stolen goods. Tech, maybe, or some kind of Lost Logia? No wonder the Navy seemed to have a sector-wide burr up its ass.

But two things made Auburn shrug off his distaste. The "sector-wide burr"...well, that was a different sector, one the _Lagoon_ had left behind not long after picking up the extra shipment. And more importantly, he'd been paid well and in advance.

He bit the end off a fresh cigar, spat the tip in the general direction of a trash bucket, and lit up. People in his line of work who started asking questions tended to be _out_ of work in a hurry, out of work or out an airlock. The shipment meant trouble for someone, and Auburn was dedicated to making sure that it wasn't him.

~X X X~

"So what are you so busy with, anyway?" Nanoha asked.

"How did you know that it was something special?"

"Motherhood practice. If your teenager is in bed and you're still doing paperwork, it's not a routine matter."

"Deductive reasoning. Maybe you should be an Enforcer."

"I don't know; I think I may just be too subtle for their style." The two women put their foreheads together and laughed at Nanoha's joke.

"It's this last case that I was on. I hate loose ends, and a multi-million, state-of-the-art armored military vehicle is a really big one. _Someone_ wants it for _something_, and I think we'd be better off knowing what that is now rather than later. I know that it's in the hands of the regional command, and that it's not a black mark on my record that the locals screwed up, but it bothers me. I can't know that a problem exists and easily walk away from it. You know what I mean."

Nanoha nodded.

"Absolutely."

"So I've been going over the case file; I have to file a fully formal report anyway for the prosecutors' office, so I have a valid excuse for revisiting it. The problem is, the only ones who know where the Nest went are the Aldorous Enclave, and they're not talking." Fate sighed.

"I'm amazed that they could order up something like that, anyway."

"Yeah—oh, blast!" Fate sat bolt upright, nearly jostling Nanoha off her lap. "If the buyer wanted something like a Nest, how would they know it was available? Maybe we've got hold of the wrong end of the stick entirely?"

She unlaced her arm from around Nanoha and called up her screen and keyboard again.

_Priority Memorandum: Harlaown, Fate T. to Enforcement Bureau, Regional Directorate, Region 7_

_Re: Case Number TI-J-7625_

_Suggest follow-up be pursued with Tiburon Heavy Industries. Possibility high that corporate official(s) responsible for diversion of goods had contact with intended purchaser at start of transaction._

"You get all terse and formal when you write," Nanoha observed.

"I know. But it's good practice for when my reports start getting copied to the high command."

"Since when do Enforcers' reports..." Her eyes widened and she broke into a big grin when she figured it out.

"They don't, but a Naval Liaison Officer's certainly would."

Nanoha's excited squeal even woke up Vivio.

~X X X~

_A/N: Nanoha and Fate's discussion of Nanoha's power limiter references RadiantBeam's story, "Pain to Pain."_


	11. Chapter X

"Well," Hayate murmured as she regarded the conference room door. "This should be quite a battle."

"I should go in to protect you!" Rein piped up, making the General giggle.

"Not literally, Rein. I don't think the admirals are likely to attack me physically."

Rein was undaunted. "I'm supposed to help defend you against attack as a Unison Device, Mistress, and character assassination is just another form of attack."

"She has a point," Fate observed.

"That's what I have a Naval Liaison Officer for, to get between me and the slings and arrows of the flag officers," she told her old friend impishly.

"In that case you should have given the job to Yuuno," she teased back, "since barrier magic isn't my specialty."

"Everyone today is such a wiseacre," Hayate chuckled, then turned serious. "I'm glad you decided to stay, Fate-chan."

"I wish I'd waited a day so I wouldn't start by walking into a policy conference unprepared."

"Ah, it'll be easy. Just smile and nod and say that all my ideas are the most brilliant ones you've ever heard. You'll sound just like you got a full briefing!"

"Do you say things like that to people who _aren't_ old friends?"

"Nope. I have a completely different set of teasing for ordinary co-workers."

"Mistress is very thorough!" Rein said proudly. Hayate got the impression that she'd just been zinged by her own device. Fate certainly seemed to think so; she broke into giggles.

"Yes, that she certainly is!"

"Well," Hayate admitted, "at least you can't say that you're not having fun at your new job, Fate-chan."

~X X X~

"Just what the hell are we _doing _here?" Enforcer Julia Corvair complained, yanking on her long, pale pink braid as if she were trying to pull-start her brain.

The glass-walled cylinder rose smoothly through its tube along the side of the Tiburon Building. It whisked past numerous doors where elevators were awaited but did not stop; this one had been set to take its current occupants by express service directly to the executive level.

"The Regional Directorate thinks that the investigators have been looking in the wrong direction for the Nest's buyer," Corvair's partner replied. "We've been trying to link the buyer through Aldorous Enclave, but all we've managed to do is turn up a couple of new Aldorous smuggling routes that we didn't know about and rounded up a handful of flunkies and bit players."

"And this gets us yanked off a job we'd spent three weeks on and rerouted to Jarentil why?"

"Because Tiburon Heavy Industries is one of the TSAB's major defense contractors and if there's a rotten apple in the barrel providing our military equipment they want to find it _before_ they bite down."

"This was High-and-Mighty Harlaown's case originally, wasn't it? I guess when you start out at nine, burnout by thirty makes sense."

"How do you figure that?"

"Hey, if she'd done her job she'd have conducted this interview last week, right? Instead, Regional has to call us in to cover her lazy ass."

Teana Lanster glanced over at the junior Enforcer, a look of disgust on her face. The only reason why she didn't immediately light into Corvair was that she understood where the salmon-haired woman was coming from. Tea had been—still was, really—a hard-edged perfectionist and knew how galling it was to be forced to drop one project to go run off and do another after pouring considerable hard work into it.

On the other hand, Tea had also read the case file.

"Hey, Julia? If you remember, the whole reason Fate didn't close off this matter was because the local cops got too territorial over the case and wouldn't just let go and do _their_ job. So how about we learn from that and do ours?"

"I'm here, aren't I?" she grumbled.

"Your body is, but you've got thirty-seven seconds before this elevator reaches the top floor to get your mind back from Orvellia. I'm not going to have our names added to the list of stupid people who messed up this case by being too worried about personal turf to do their jobs."

Corvair growled a bit, but conceded the point.

"Yeah, right," she said with bad grace, then, "Hey, hold on a sec. You called Enforcer Harlaown 'Fate' just now, didn't you?"

"Yes?"

"So what's up with that?"

"I was her aide when I started out in the Enforcement Bureau. She basically taught me everything I know about the job."

"...Oh."

"Yeah. 'Oh.'"

The elevator chimed, reporting that they'd just arrived at the executive level. Corvair wondered how Tiburon's CEO was going to react when they told him they were about to take apart his company from the top down, conducting searching inquiries into the corporation's financial and physical-plant records as well as the personal lives of individual employees. She had a feeling that pointing out that the TSAB Defense Powers Act authorized such steps when a military contractor was suspected of malfeasance would be balm to her currently crabby soul.

~X X X~

_This is it_, McLaren thought. The network core was a three-story construct of gleaming silver and pale blue light, a structure consisting not only of physical but magical conduits. Although not an artificial intelligence as it lacked personality or "soul," it was as impressive in its own way for the sheer amount of data it could process and number of operations it could perform without any perceptible slowdown.

Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead and the hand which gripped the data unit was so slick with sweat that he was afraid it would slip out of his hand and go falling down the chamber. The translucent plastic walkways seemed even more insubstantial than usual, and he felt like there were eyes on him everywhere. _Weren't there?_ The surveillance covered every angle, including much more than just a visual feed; this was, after all, one of the highest-security areas in the headquarters building.

_But then, that's why Sonoma picked me, isn't it?_ Because McLaren had clearance. Because he could walk right through scanners that could easily reveal transformation magic or physical disguise. Because he could access the core directly and interface a variety of equipment with it, all without raising the slightest suspicion. Because it was so much simpler than trying to have someone infiltrate the base and penetrate multiple layers of physical and magical security.

_What am I doing?_ he asked himself even as he took the unit out of his pocket and slotted it into his interface link. _Connecting a foreign program? What is it that they want? At _best_, this is espionage._

He triggered the unit's screen, scrolled past the pictures—_don't look!—_and selected the program file.

_It might be treason—computer terrorism_, he thought. _No; Sonoma told me to bring him something. That implies information. Or...did he just say that to make me more likely to go along with it?_

The absurdity of someone telling a lie to persuade him to do something when they were already holding his family hostage almost made McLaren want to laugh. Then again, on second thought, maybe it wasn't so absurd. Sonoma wanted him to do this. Whatever tactics made it more likely that it would happen were the ones he'd use. Minimize the severity of the crime, make it more likely that McLaren wouldn't start thinking in terms of noble sacrifices...

_Yeah. Sure he'd lie._ But there were redundancies, backups, security in place, weren't there? A program capable of bypassing that even from within was the computer equivalent of Lost Logia, not to be hidden on a portable data unit!

But then, wasn't all this nothing but a futile attempt to reassure himself? He'd made his choice; he knew what he was going to do.

McLaren linked his interface to the network core, entered his security clearance, initiated the standard maintenance/monitoring programs that were his actual task at this time, took a deep breath, and then with a shaking finger uploaded Sonoma's program to do its work.

~X X X~

"And that's the situation," Gallardo summed up his readiness report.

Hayate sighed and leaned back in her chair. The morning's conference had been rough, but it was at least better than addressing the full Council, and she though that she was steadily winning more support for her idea of a permanently attached naval squadron. Unfortunately, it was going to cost her in political coin; the cross-branch support she'd gotten from the Navy had often been key in her effectiveness which had in turn triggered her meteoric rise through the ranks.

_And now that I'm the fair-haired child of my own service branch, that support is starting to dwindle._

It was too important a point to concede, though. CCDF needed that squadron to replace Heimdall, and Heimdall had to go. It was too limited, lacking mission flexibility as well as operational precision.

Perhaps more importantly, it scared the hell out of her—and _she_ was the one with authority over it! That was never a comforting thought for a military commander to have about a weapons system, that prickle at the back of her neck. It hung over her like a literal Sword of Damocles waiting to fall.

Had Carim's prophecy set up this nervousness in her?

Or had, she thought ruefully, just watched too many sci-fi anime series for her own good?

Externally, she gave no sign of the thoughts gnawing at her; Hayate was good at multitasking and had had no trouble following what her aide was saying.

"So it's the Sword Team that's having the most problems," she finished for him. She'd picked the name for the simple reason that Signum was the unit commander; short names with easy mnemonic devices built in made military operations run more smoothly. "The old problem, where the elite mages switch to the Air Force after mastering flight, or head off to the Navy." She wiggled her eyebrows at Fate, who winced.

"If it's okay to ask, why did you want to establish a strike force under direct CCDF command?" Fate said.

"Response time," Hayate answered. "If we have a situation where a rapid strike by a small team is needed, I don't want to have to put in a request to police, Air Force, or naval units. And most of the Ground Forces battalions are organized for military field operations, and the commando units we _do _have are in the field where they're needed instead of waiting around on Mid, so I'm trying to build Signum's unit from within. Does that explain things properly?"

"Yes, thank you."

Hayate smiled at her friend.

"Good. And since part of why we have a problem is the Navy, with all the excitement of sailing off to other worlds and heroically defeating Lost Logia, it seems to me that our new NLO should help to fix the problem."


	12. Chapter XI

Verdance was one of the more unlovely cities on Midchilda. An industrial center, it lacked the gleaming, ultra-modern style of Cranagan or the old-world elegance of the Belkan Autonomous Zone. Plants for processing, refining, or manufacturing were common, and while the magitech base for operation made the city's industry function cleanly and efficiently, there was a brute functionality to the design that many outsiders found mechanistically oppressive.

Bart Pacer figured that it suited him just fine.

He hadn't wanted to come halfway across the planet, mind you. Some things, though, required the personal touch; he had to agree with Sonoma on that point. This was the trickiest part of the smuggling operation apart from getting the Nest off Jarentil-and how sweet was it that the JFP had ended up being their best ally in pulling that off!-and he wanted to be on hand to prevent slip-ups.

Not that Pacer anticipated anything going wrong. He'd planned things out carefully with his various transport contacts, making sure that they were reliable. It was a little more complex than the usual smuggling run, but not so much that it hadn't been done before. And the added links had proven useful in shaking off the Enforcers from their trail.

Now it was just a matter of getting the container off the _Lagoon_, through customs, and onto the rail system. In two days, it would be in Cranagan. Simplicity itself.

"Hey, Bart."

Pacer grinned as he saw the uniformed woman approaching. Her green uniform looked faded in the steel-gray dawn, stripped free of bright color like everything else in the city.

"Callie."

Agent Packard, Midchilda Customs Service, returned his grin. Customs was a matter of local administration, not TSAB, though there was plenty of overlapping jurisdiction more interesting to lawyers than ordinary citizens. The point was, an experienced courier like Pacer had to know who was available for what, and who had their hand out for extra retirement contributions.

"Nice evening," she said. "What've you got for me?"

"Industrial parts," he told her. "Client's in a big rush to get started, but just had to get delivery on the cheap." He sighed. "Ask me, he should've just bought from a Mid manufacturer and saved most of the hassle. But then, most of those folks figure time and money are completely different things."

He reached for a pack of cigarettes and lit up, the pale glow at the coffin-nail's tip a bright spot in the gloom of the shipping yard.

"Guess I shouldn't complain. I mean, hey, it's more business for me, right? Not my fault if a guy being dumb puts more cash into my pocket."

"Only way to think of it," Packard agreed. She was around forty, with shoulder-length blonde hair and sharp features. She'd been pretty twenty years ago, Pacer guessed, but time and trouble had thinned her out to emphasize the angles of nose and chin while coarsening the skin. He didn't know if it was some personal problem (family? medical bills? loan payments?) that had first made her willing to look the other way on the job, or if she was just greedy by nature. Sonoma, he thought, would have known; their leader liked to make a psychological study of people on a regular basis, a matter of routine. Pacer was admittedly more casual about it. If he knew that he could get someone to do what he wanted, and how he could make it happen, the why usually didn't interest him.

"Shipment came in on the _Lagoon_ yesterday afternoon," Pacer said. "Owner's name is Peregrine Technical Ltd. I need it to be on the 8:18 rail freight to Menador today or my rump's gonna be in a sling."

Packard touched her belt-mounted sub-Device to make the port transit logs open up on a screen before her. She searched with practiced ease, soon calling up the record of standard shipping container No. 07836A29L. The details of weight, contents, and other manifest information popped right up. Of course, none of it was true except for the weight and what ship had brought it in; Pacer figured that humanity had invented the first forged manifest the day after it had invented the shipping crate.

"This one yours?" she asked.

"Yep."

"Let's go take a look, then, and see what we can do to make your client happy."

They walked through the cargo yard side by side, their steps nearly silent in the soft-soled boots both wore for traction on often-slick pavement and the metal interiors of cargo containers. The stacks were like the rest of Verdance: some containers brand-new with fresh paint, others crusted with rust, but all of them solid and functional, the oblong shapes standardized for use in spacecraft, sea, rail, or road travel. There was nothing aesthetic or poetic about them, but they still made Pacer think of old ghosts, of deaths by violence, some at his own hands. It hadn't been a peaceful life, these past twenty years. But then again, what chance had he had, once the TSAB-backed government troops had been done ruining everything he held dear.

"That's you, third from the bottom," Packard said, checking her screen. Pacer recognized the container's identifying marks. "I'm sorry; I have to scan it for mass-weapon explosive compounds."

Pacer waved it off.

"Go ahead." There wasn't anything in the container that would show up on _that_ kind of scan anyway.

Packard reconfigured her screen, and a pale gold aura bathed the container for thirty seconds, a scrying cast built into the sub-Device. This was where the sharp limits of the customs service's equipment helped. A true scrying mage would have gathered all kinds of information about the container and the Nest within, but Packard's toy was limited to doing what was asked of it and no more.

"Looks like you're clear. Now, let's see, I just need to make a visual inspection and check the clearance documents." Technically, in order to give expedited clearance in accordance with the law, Customs was supposed to open up the container and look inside. Pacer took a thick envelope out of a pocket and handed it over. Hard currency still had its place in the world and probably always would, so long as there were transactions where the link between payer and payee wasn't something either wanted to acknowledge.

Packard opened the envelope and riffed through the contents.

"I hope your visual inspection was satisfactory?" Pacer said, grinning faintly.

"I completely approve of what I saw." She put the money away, then noted her approval on the screen. With that taken care of, the container would automatically be taken to the rail freight depot and loaded onto the train later in the morning. _Almost_, he thought. _We're almost there. If Sonoma can get us what we need..._

"Hey, what are you two doing!" a sharp voice barked. There was a hint of a squeak in the cry, though, suggesting nervousness. _That_ worried Pacer. The nervous were unpredictable. They made mistakes.

Next to him, Packard made a little growling noise deep in her throat, then turned.

"Agent DeSoto." _Her _voice sounded more exasperated than angry. "Exactly what does your fresh-scrubbed, two-weeks-on-the-job nose think it's sticking itself into?"

"Agent Packard?" Surprise replaced nervousness. Pacer turned his head just enough to see a slim, dark-haired man-boy, really, no older than twenty-dressed in a Customs Service uniform that was so new it almost sparkled even in the pale dawn. "What's going on? Is this man trespassing?"

Packard sighed.

"No, DeSoto, he isn't trespassing."

"But this area is supposed to be off-limits to everyone but the Customs Service and the shipyard personnel, and he hasn't got a dockworker's badge."

Pacer wondered how many dockworkers actually wore their ID tags while they were doing actual work. In his experience, that answer was "not a hell of a lot."

"He's a shipper, DeSoto, concerned about his shipment. I've just finished expediting his clearance for it."

"Oh, okay...but hey, there's no crane around here. You couldn't have gotten the container down for inspection."

_Sharp eyes for someone new and stupid_, Pacer thought. _Which is too bad for him._

Packard kept on trying to brazen it out, which wasn't necessarily such a bad plan.

"For Heaven's sake, DeSoto, I'm doing my job here. Maybe when you've spent more than a month on it you'll realize that it doesn't all work like it's written up in the training manuals if we actually want to move cargo." There was genuine feeling there, not just the fear at being caught out. Kids with theoretical knowledge and no experience were the bane of veterans in every profession.

"You're not supposed to skip the visual inspection. Most contraband won't show up on the scans, and if a release is being expedited it's important to-" He broke off, eyes widening with the realization. "You-this-you didn't inspect it because there _is_ contraband, didn't you?" His hand dropped to his hip for the grip of his ANT. "You're deliberately letting this man smuggle something into or out of the port! That's why he's here! He's giving you some kind of bribe!"

"What the hell? Go home, kid; your little cops-and-robbers fantasies aren't impressing anyone."

"No! I'm bringing you two back in to the customs house, and we'll have his container searched. We'll find out what you're up to!"

"The boy's a regular Super Robot Ranger," Pacer said, disgusted.

"Probably still wears the underwear," Packard agreed.

"Come on, let's go!" He had his ANT out, pointing towards them with a surprisingly steady hand. Full of himself and wet behind the ears he might be, but he was at least maintaining some level of composure in a high-stress situation.

Pacer almost felt sorry for him.

"You're kidding, right?" he said. "You seriously expect us to just stroll back in with you?" He brushed his hand against his vest pocket, palming an item the size and shape of a playing card. He spun it between his fingers and he was suddenly holding a two-foot "magic wand."

DeSoto fired his weapon, but Pacer stopped it easily with a Defenser barrier. ANTs were fine non-lethal weapons to use against F-rank nulls, but not a serious threat against a competent mage.

Pacer pointed the tip of his Storage Device at the young agent. DeSoto fumbled with his belt, belatedly realizing that he needed to call for backup.

"Strike down the foe before me!" Pacer incanted. "Flash Bolt!"

A surge of bright green light snapped from the top of the device to DeSoto's body; he crumpled to the pavement unconscious.

"You know what has to happen now, right?" he said to Packard. "The kid's a witness."

She looked almost as green as the faded color of her uniform, but she nodded.

"Yeah. Yeah, I know."

"Accident's the best way. Rookie mistake, unstable equipment, maybe."

Packard nodded again.

"Easy to see how it could happen," she agreed. She was a practical woman, quickly coming to terms with what had to be done. Or maybe just an easily corrupted one. Bribery, smuggling...and now murder?

Someone so false didn't make for a reliable ally unless some strong self-interest was involved, Pacer thought.

Packard evidently thought the same thing.

"Of course, two accidents on the same night wouldn't be particularly routine," she pointed out. "That kind of coincidence would make an administrator check the records, maybe take a second look at the last few things a person was doing."

"Relax. I've got better ways to keep you quiet. By this time tomorrow, they'll have no chance of finding me, leaving just you to look at for corruption charges and the death of a fellow agent. Yeah, I don't think you'll be all too motivated to open your mouth."

"Just so as we understand each other."

Pacer shrugged.

"Business is business, right? Everyone wants to know where they stand. Now come on. Kid's not going to nap forever, and the morning shift's going to be on soon enough."

He gave her another sharp look, and she nodded, accepting yet another piece of practical reality. It made Pacer perversely glad, seeing the faded-out customs agent with her faded-out soul, that he still had something he believed in enough to put his neck on the line for besides just money and self-interest.

~X X X~

Eileen McLaren shivered. Her prison wasn't cold or dank; rather it looked to be an ordinary basement, with brick walls and bare pipes and utility conduits, but to her it might as well have been the deepest, darkest hole on the planet, some medieval oubliette. The steel chain that manacled her right wrist led to a heavy staple embedded in the wall just like in some dungeon, as did the one that bound her son's ankle. It rubbed painfully at her wrist, but if she pressed her back to the wall and stretched, there was just enough length for her to be able to hold Billy's hand.

She'd spent a lot of their time doing that.

Often, the pounding beat of music could be heard. It was muffled, but even that told her how loud it truly was, louder and more forceful than from an ordinary sound system. She didn't have her watch, but it played for long hours, confirming that it was more than just from somebody's home, probably a stage or club DJ's system. Eileen didn't miss the irony of it: somewhere in the same building were people partying, celebrating, having a good time, while she and Billy were...

The music was silent now, though what that meant she didn't know. Across the room a door creaked open.

"Breakfast time for our guests," mocked the blonde woman who'd led the original kidnapping. She tossed a paper bag; it hit the concrete floor between two prisoners. At no time had anyone even approached within arms' reach of them; they took no chances.

"Please," Eileen said. "Please, for pity's sake, let me talk to my husband!"

"I don't think so. He's doing an important job for us, and we don't want him distracted."

_An important job_, she thought. _What are they making him do?_ She knew that in his position he had access to sensitive data and important computer facilities. It didn't take a genius to figure out the general kind of thing they'd want from him. It made Eileen shudder. Espionage? Treason? Those were foul words, even sinful ones when one considered that the Church was a loyal supporter and key member of the TSAB.

Yet she was also a mother, and more than anything else she wanted her children to be safe, the living and the yet-unborn both. Where she'd have urged Georg to tell his superiors everything if it were only her _own_ life at stake...

"Mom?" the boy whimpered. "Mom, are we going to be okay?"

"It's...we..." She wanted to reassure him, but the lies choked on her lips; she couldn't make herself believe them even for long enough to say them. "Pray," she finally said. "Pray to Her Majesty to keep us all safe."


	13. Chapter XII

In Holy Writ it talked about the torments of conscience. On some level, McLaren had never understood the phrase. In his innocence he had assumed that those who committed evil acts never felt the pangs of a chastising inner voice. Now he knew differently, and it made him wonder how many others had suffered the same way, forced by circumstances to do something they otherwise found abhorrent.

He found it almost impossible to go through his normal workday life. The secret hung over him; he imagined that his body was made of glass so that everyone who passed by could look through him and see what he'd done, that he carried the brand of the outcast on his flesh like in ancient lore.

But of course, those were only fanciful imaginings. It wasn't the accusing stares of his co-workers he had to suffer, but only his own. They didn't know he was a betrayer. The closest anyone came to that was to ask if he wasn't feeling well, which question was easy enough to shrug off with a wan smile and a fraction of the truth.

No, the fear and self-loathing he felt was purely of his own making.

But what choice did he have? His oath of loyalty, his patriotism, those were important things, but next to his wife, his son, his unborn child? He couldn't bring himself to make that choice. Indeed, he didn't know what he would think of someone who could.

Nature, at least, seemed completely indifferent to his pain. The weather was sunny and bright, with clean, crisp air and a hint of a breeze-a perfect day, in fact, for eating at an outdoor café like the Brass Ring.

McLaren sat down at one of the glass-topped tables, eyes open for any sign of Sonoma. He didn't expect to be approached at once, even though he'd arrived precisely on time. Their first meeting had taught him that Sonoma was cautious, planned things in advance and checked a situation out for snares. He'd want to be certain that McLaren hadn't gotten cute and sought help-or been found out and forced to go along with the law's plans. Thinking about it, he now believed that was the point of Sonoma's ostentatiously leaving the café with his two friends the last time: to drive home to McLaren that the kidnapper was several steps ahead of him and that any attempted trickery would be futile.

Message received.

"You, sir, look like a man in need of some fortification."

A hand reached over McLaren's shoulder and set a latte down in front of him. The systems engineer looked up and back over his shoulder to see a man with royal blue hair and a neatly-trimmed moustache.

"Sorry; I'm waiting for someone."

"Yes, I know." The blue-haired man sat down opposite him, cupping his own drink between his hands. "Last time you treated me, so I thought this time I should pay. There's no reason, after all, that we can't maintain the courtesies."

McLaren felt like his thoughts were running in mud, something sucking them back as his mind tried to work.

"...Sonoma?"

"Of course." He shifted his weight, settling himself as comfortably as possibly into the metal chair.

"But you—"

"Look different? Certainly. There are such things as image recorders in our world, Captain. Still and moving pictures, captured for all eternity. It protects you and your loved ones as well-unless, of course, you _want_ to be provided with my actual appearance, which I would then have to take steps to prevent you from revealing. Likewise, if you should encounter a casual acquaintance here, you won't be seen meeting the same man twice. Such a basic application of transformation magic, and yet achieving so many different goals."

McLaren opened his mouth to say something, but Sonoma forestalled him with a gesture. A waited approached and set a grilled sandwich down on the table, the plate clinking off the glass.

"You're...going to eat lunch?"

"I heartily recommend it. A midday meal provides needed energy and valuable nutrition, particularly for a man who probably isn't used to making his own breakfast and so shorted yourself there as well. Or do I wrong you there? Are you the kind of man who regularly assists with household duties despite being the sole breadwinner?" He picked up the sandwich and took a bite, chewing deliberately while he allowed the barb to sink home.

"You bastard."

"Such language." Sonoma shook his head. "You need to think of this as a business transaction, Captain. I do admit to taking some steps which aren't usual for a purely commercial situation, but the principle still applies. Remain calm, and things will go so much more easily."

"Remain calm. Remain _calm_, he says!" McLaren's voice rose into a squeaking little laugh that caused more than one person to turn their head. Sonoma did not speak at once, but ate another bite and washed it down with a swallow of his drink. When he did respond, his tone was affable but his eyes-deep green this time-held McLaren with a gaze as sharp and hard as a sword-edge.

"Indeed. I'd suggest you consider the possible consequences if you decide to start making a scene. You can if you really want to, but I'd strongly advise against it. Consider the effects."

McLaren winced, brought back hard to himself. He reached for his cup and drank off about a third of its contents in a quick gulp, trying to steady his nerves.

"I've done what you asked. By Heaven, what more do you want of me?"

"Nothing more than that," Sonoma told him with a smile, "though it might be noted you haven't actually delivered what I asked."

"You haven't told me to," McLaren said truculently.

"Answering semantics with semantics? Well, that's fair enough. I'm asking now, though."

Hesitantly, McLaren took a datachip out of his pocket. Square and flat, a little bigger than his thumbnail, its size was dictated more by the ease of human use than the actual space needed by the technology.

"This is what your program caused the network core to download to my interface unit during yesterday's maintenance. I hope that's what you expected to happen."

"Something of the kind, yes," Sonoma agreed. He took another bite of his sandwich, then dabbed at his lips with a napkin. "Were you planning to let me have it?"

McLaren thought of handing the chip over, but the idea of making flesh-to-flesh contact with the kidnapper filled him with sudden revulsion. Instead, he set the chip on the table and slid it across so that it clicked off Sonoma's latte cup. Sonoma palmed it and made it vanish with the deft ease of a stage magician.

"So what about my family? How will you release them?"

One rich blue eyebrow arched upwards.

"Release?"

McLaren stared at Sonoma.

"But...but you..."

His tormentor shook his head.

"I made no such promise. Indeed, if you'll give it some thought you'll realize that that would be the last thing I should do at this stage."

McLaren clawed at the arms of his chair. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening!

Sonoma sighed heavily.

"Apparently, though, I'm forced to explain." He wet his throat with another sip. "I presume you are aware of what it was you just handed me? Excellent; at least you aren't playing the _complete_ fool. Well, such a thing is only valuable if _used_, I presume you understand, and within a limited timeframe. Being aware of this, what would you do if I saw to reuniting you with your family today? Go home and quiver with guilt and fear, praying never to be found out? Or would you immediately march into your office and throw yourself on the famous TSAB mercy? Reveal all, and hope your sins will be forgiven due to the extreme pressure you were under and the extensive information you would give them about me?"

Frowning for the first time, Sonoma went on to add with surprising bitterness, "You might well get away with it. Your current commanding officer, after all, possesses a criminal record. Unique artificial intelligences, genetic experiments, combat cyborgs; the service is positively littered with individuals whose criminal acts were immediately forgiven as soon as they were willing to switch sides-provided, of course, that they had skills and abilities that made it worthwhile for the TSAB to keep them. You're a valuable if not unique talent, so I'd expect you to qualify for leniency."

He shook his head sharply as if trying to clear it; for whatever reason the discussion of the TSAB's leniency towards criminals bothered Sonoma. McLaren wondered why, but only casually, without giving it any real thought. Frankly, he _couldn't_ give real thought to anything at that point.

"I think you see my point. I have no intention of relinquishing our leverage until it's too late for you to play hero and stop us."

"And then—?"

Sonoma shrugged.

"And then you won't be in a position to cause us any trouble. You'll have no useful information to threaten us with, and our...guests...will know even less than you. You're welcome to each other. On the other hand, until then...let's consider them my insurance policy against any spontaneous acts of martyrdom on your part."

"You...you..." McLaren's jaw worked, but noiselessly, his command of the language insufficient to describe the kind of filth he considered the other man to be.

"Temper, temper, Captain. You might consider this: you've already done what is required of you. How much simpler would it be for me to _not_ play fair and at the same time insure that you won't say a thing about us?"

Or in plain language, _why don't I just kill all of you and have done with it?_ Now that it was out there between them, McLaren wondered why he didn't do just that. Did Sonoma, or perhaps his associates since he kept saying 'we' and 'us' all the time, have qualms about killing innocent people? Or was it something more practical, like the fear that if McLaren was found dead or went missing that the routine investigation would reveal something else and put the police on Sonoma's track?

Whatever else it might mean, the threat had done its job: it hammered home once more just how precarious McLaren's situation was. The well-being of his family was completely in this man's power, left to the dubious mercy of a kidnapper.

It was almost too much to bear. He was a TSAB Ground Forces officer, a soldier even if his weapons were data and information control instead of magic and artillery. He was supposed to be fighting, in his way, to protect others and preserve peace across the dimensions. To fall in battle if he must, but not like this, not as nothing but a victim.

"Who are you," he groaned, "to have done this to us?"

"Poetically said," noted Sonoma as he finished off his sandwich, "but I don't think that you really want an answer to that. In fact, if I were you, I'd want to know as little as possible about all this. A shadow passing over you in the night, cast from an unknown source, and that's all you can bear witness to." He paused and chuckled. "Look at me, inspired to poetry of my own by your example. But I think you take my point. Don't think that I haven't been in your position, Captain, so I understand how it gnaws at you, but you need to take care of your own."

He finished off his latte, then set the cup aside and rose to his feet.

"I think if we meet again it will be somewhere else. The food here isn't up to my standard, although the coffee is good. Besides, while at least it's not a darkened corner booth, restaurant meetings are so trite. Good day, Captain."

He turned and walked away from the table at a deliberate pace, not once looking back, though McLaren was certain that if he'd tried anything desperate Sonoma would have known at once. But McLaren didn't try anything. He just sat there, paralyzed, as frozen in place as it seemed that his life had been. He sat there staring after the way the kidnapper had gone for a long time, praying for some way out of his dilemma, but those prayers seemed to fall on deaf ears.


	14. Chapter XIII

Vivio let out a heavy sigh and bent over, bracing her hands on her knees for support while she panted for breath.

"Hey, what's the matter, kid, going soft on me?"

She raised her eyes to see Vita come in for a landing.

_I'd make a snarky comment, but I need to conserve the oxygen_, she said telepathically.

"Mobility and cardiovascular training are vital for a forward. You'll be pushing yourself to your limits both physically and magically, without the kind of opportunities for rest the support types get."

_I just don't like the practice days when I don't get to hit back._

Vita chuckled.

"Hey, if you don't hate your drill sergeant at least a little bit she's doing something wrong."

"You must...be great...at this, then..." Vivio wheezed, but she was grinning while she said it.

"Besides, while mock battle's great, it's important to learn to do more than just fight me." She returned her student's grin. "Though unless you get into a brawl with your mom or something you won't have to worry about getting hit any harder."

"Is that something to be proud of?"

"Wiseass."

"Learned from the best!"

"That you did. So how'd you like to prove it?"

"Huh? Is there some competition for smart-mouthed comments?"

Vita groaned.

"Not your mouth, kid, your fighting ability. As in, the TSAB military?"

Vivio perked up immediately.

"Another training mission?" As an officer cadet, she was routinely sent into the field for missions under the command of other mages for seasoning in the practical applications of what she was learning. They were her favorite part of training, since they gave her the chance to actually do some good with her powers.

"Not exactly."

"Mode release," Vivio said, regaining her wind. Her Barrier Jacket was replaced by her ordinary shorts and T-shirt while Parsifal returned to his bracelet standby mode. She began her cool-down stretches. "So if it's not a training mission, what is it, Vita-sensei?"

The redhead grinned at her.

"It's a commissioned post."

Vivio's jaw dropped.

"Eh?"

She was aware that she was looking like a fish, but there wasn't much she could do about it.

"It's a full-time position with a Ground Forces tactical combat unit. There'll be every expectation of regular combat assignments. You'll have a warrant officer's commission until you properly qualify for your lieutenancy."

"Seriously? That's incredible! Vita-sensei, how did this-wait a minute; you said Ground Forces? Did Aunt Hayate have anything to do with this?"

"Well..." Vita glanced aside nervously, as if she was thinking of coming up with some kind of story, but then her nature won out and she spun back to face Vivio directly. "So what the hell if she did? She's having a problem with Signum's unit and you're a good solution. What's wrong with that?"

"You have to ask? Geez, would it be too much to ask for me to ever earn _anything_ in my entire life?"

"What are you talking about? You work damn near as hard as your mothers."

Vivio ticked the list off on her fingers.

"I attend an exclusive private school for a population I'm not part of because of what I am, not who—tuition-free, I might add."

"Yeah, that drives Nanoha crazy," Vita admitted, "but they won't take money for teaching the Sankt Kaiser."

"How did I get my training in scrying magic and my part-time job as an assistant librarian? Because my mother's best friend in the world is the _head_ librarian at the Infinity Library! Heck, how did I qualify for having you as my personal magical-combat trainer, or to get Parsifal as an Intelligent Device? Because of Nanoha-mama and Aunt Hayate."

"Now just wait one minute here, kid. You're an Ancient Belkan user. There's like eight of us in the whole TSAB. A regular combat trainer couldn't give you the hands-on advice you need, just like a device like Parsifal that mimics an Armed Device's function is the only kind that suits your magic!"

Vivio folded her arms across her chest.

"That's true, sensei, but even so, if my last name was Carrera or Smith or Benz instead of Takamachi, would I have ever gotten those opportunities? No, I'd still be lagging behind my class, wondering why I couldn't _quite_ get my spells to work right.

"And now, hey, I'm still two years away from completing my OCS courses, but here comes Aunt Hayate with a commission warrant and a full-time job, Santa Claus delivering out of season!"

"You might want to put your Barrier Jacket back up," Vita growled at her, "'cause I'm about to hit you upside the head for being so stupid!" She slammed Graf Eisen's shaft into her palm to emphasize her point. "You need Shamal to check you out for post-concussion syndrome, or are you just naturally this way? And why is it that whenever you decide to turn your brain off you do it by low-rating the people who care about you? Not to mention yourself."

"Myself?"

"Yeah, yourself. You're top of your class at that fancy school of yours, right?"

"Yes..."

"You trying to tell me that you're not qualified to root out all those obscure books from the library?"

"Well, no—"

"I know a hell of a lot better than you how you're doing in combat training," Vita snapped, "so I'm not even gonna ask that one. So you tell me this: how many scrying mages does the Ground Forces have who are also trained for combat and possess A-rank potential?"

"_Scrying_ mages?"

"What did you think Hayate wanted you for, your fashion sense? Grunts she has, but Signum's Sword Team is way low on operational specialists. Hell, even if you say yes she still might march into the library and haul Yuuno off by force just to get another support mage who won't squish if you look at them wrong."

Vivio shook her head in amazement.

"But I thought I've been training as a forward."

It was a silly comment; she knew as soon as it left her lips that it was going to rub Vita the wrong way.

"We're talking about military service, kid. You apply your skills and training in the way that your commanding officer tells you to. If someone's got better things for you to do than engage in the front line, then you do them, unless you're saying that you're going to turn down the opportunity."

She stopped, then shook her head.

"Look. You're only a cadet, not a serving officer; you don't have to take this assignment if you don't want to. It's an offer, not a draft notice. You want to plod on the long way or you want to go Navy, that's up to you. But don't think that Hayate's doing you any favors by asking for you. You'll work like a dog if I know Signum—and I do—and you'll be out in serious, frontline, I-could-get-killed-out-here battle any time you scramble. Plus you'll have to flip your schedule on its head, cut down to part-time school _and_ keep up with the parts of your OCS that can't be replaced by active-duty service. You're pretty well signing up for a world of punishment."

"That does sound much more attractive, thanks."

Despite herself, Vita laughed.

"Hell, you're serious, aren't you?"

"Actually, well...yes."

"You're turning out more and more like your mom every day."

"That's a good thing, right?"

Vita grinned.

"Kinda depends on who you ask, doesn't it?"

"Well, yeah, anybody who's stared down Raising Heart's pointy end may have some mixed feelings there."

"...Wait, that includes both of us."

Vivio arched her back and stretched, feeling a couple of pops.

"It's a pretty comprehensive list. Which reminds me: Aunt Hayate's sneaky, but she wouldn't go behind Mom's back on trying to jump me to active duty. How did she get it approved?"

Vita snickered.

"Wrong mama."

"Huh? Oh, you mean she cleared it with Fate-mama instead of Nanoha-mama?"

"Right. Fate figured we should sound you out first, then talk to Nanoha about parental approval. Next year you'll be sixteen and wouldn't need it, but for now it's officially required."

"Honestly, I don't think it'll matter that much. But I do want to talk with Nanoha-mama anyway about this. It's a big decision, after all."

"Well, it's part of the 'mom' job description, giving advice on tough life choices."

"Did you...ever think about having children, Vita-sensei?"

_"Me?"_

"Yes, you."

"C'mon, kid, I'm a program; I can't give birth."

"Um, sensei, you're talking to an artificial mage with two adoptive mothers. The biological problems aren't going to impress me."

"Yeah, point there." Vita glanced aside and down, not meeting Vivio's gaze while she thought over what to say. That in itself surprised Vivio; she'd thought the question might be too personal but not that it would be difficult. When Vita looked up again, her expression was as fierce as her voice. "Okay, you tell this to _anyone—especially_ Nanoha—and I will hammer you so hard you'll come out the other side of the planet, d'you understand?"

Vivio clenched her fist and extended her little finger.

"Pinky swear."

"Okay, then." Vita hooked her pinky with Vivio's to seal the promise. "Actually...that's the problem, kind of."

"Pinky swearing keeps you from having kids?"

"Stuff like that. Kid stuff. Look, you know how my body is permanently stuck like this right? As in, hasn't hit puberty yet, which is why I'm not part of the whole who's-sleeping-with-whom debates?"

"Wait, um, you mean—"

"No sex drive. At all," she said bluntly. "Only way to change it would be to rewrite my program code to age me up, and that's pretty well impossible given that we've all been separated from the Tome of the Night Sky."

"I'm so sorry!" Vivio exclaimed sympathetically.

"Nah, don't be," Vita waved it off. "It's not like it's something I want that my body can't give me. I don't even want it, so it's not something I'm missing."

"Oh. I see, or at least I think so. So that isn't the problem, then?"

Vita shook her head.

"Nah, but it's connected. See, the brain is part of the body, right? So just like the rest of me simulates a little kid's body, so does my head."

"Huh?"

"Hey, I don't understand it either. Get Shamal to explain it to you if you need the details."

"Yeah, but I can't, because I promised not to talk about it."

Vita grinned.

"Score one for you. Anyway, it's like, nerve pathways develop and area of the brain related to judgment and impulse control and all that stuff are still getting put together in someone my age, or your age for that matter. Same way for the rest of the body, hormones and whatnot. So I've got umpty-dozen years of experience and information and emotions and whatnot up here"—she tapped her temple—"but it all gets processed the way a little kid would, see?"

Vivio nodded.

"I...yes, I do see, Vita-sensei."

"So to put it bluntly, I'd be a crappy mama, not because I'm not smart or responsible, but because I can't think like an adult, literally. That's fine in my own life, but for raising a kid? It'd never work, particularly since I'd be a single parent."

"Vita-sensei...that's really sad."

The tiny knight shrugged.

"It is what it is. And I'll be glad to play honorary aunt to Shamal and Zafira's kids, and to pound some tactical sense into the heads of multiple generations of newbies, even if they do insist on shooting up to twice my height."

She looked up at Vivio, grinning.

"Now, speaking of which, if you've got breath to ask embarrassingly personal questions, you've got breath to run with. Let's see if we can't get a few miles in on those stilts of yours."

~X X X~

The crane's claws steadily descended, the massive engine whirring as the arm was lowered. Had the workmen bothered to think of it, they might have been amazed by the strength of the huge device, found it awe-inspiring how it could shift the multi-ton loads effortlessly between the freight beds and the trucks that brought the shipping containers to and from the rail yard. They never did bother, though. To them, it was all just an ordinary part of the job, the enormous forces at play relevant only when something went wrong.

In this case, though, nothing went wrong. The freight train had arrived at Cranagan on schedule, the containers had been offloaded, and now the proper virtual documentation had been presented.

The truck driver was young for his job, only twenty or so. His clothes were a little flashy, cut more to impress at a club rather than for rugged work. The foreman didn't care. What was it to him if some kid ended up getting stains on his favorite pants because he didn't know to save them for his leisure time? That inexperience was probably why the kid was handling in-city cargo delivery instead of road hauling.

With a loud clunk the container was settled in place on the wheel frame. The yard workers shot the locking bars into place and the crane's claws detached. The arm raised up, the boom already pivoting towards the next job. The driver settled behind the wheel and strapped himself in; the foreman made the proper notations on his record, made sure the crane was clear, and gave the driver an OK-to-go wave.

Delivery was complete.

~X X X~

_A/N: Vita's "every time you turn your brain off" comment was, of course, a reference to "Steel Wings...and to a certain extent, though she doesn't actually realize it, to "Caramel Milk." Vivio's got some "famous family" issues mixed in with her "Saint-Emporer clone" issues...or in other words, every now and again she really wants to fit in and it leads her to badly misjudge her place in life. Thankfully she should grow out of it._


	15. Chapter XIV

It was all a coincidence! Nothing but sheer bad luck threatened to ruin everything! Or no, thought McLaren, perhaps it wasn't luck at all, but the will of Heaven making itself manifest, punishing him for his sins. Why else, of all the people he could have met, of all the people he could have been caught out by, did it have to be _her_?

It had been a mistake to look at them again, the pictures of his wife and son in their captivity. He knew that now, but it had been the kind of helpless impulse that a man under stress couldn't control. He felt their absence so sharply, so painfully, that he couldn't help but try to connect with them in some way, any way that he could. He'd flipped through the stills one by one, each image clawing at his heart.

And Naval Liaison Officer Commodore Fate Testarossa Harlaown had walked in on him.

McLaren supposed that it could have been worse. One of his subordinates, or a friend like Gallardo, the people who worked with him on a daily basis and knew him well enough to instantly see that something was wrong, prompting personal questions justified by their relationship. But no, that wouldn't have been worse. _Them_ he could have fobbed off with the story about how Billy was home sick, the same story that Eileen had given the school—no doubt at the kidnappers' orders to justify his absence without raising eyebrows. But Harlaown? She didn't even know him well enough to ask.

But she'd known something was wrong.

How could she have missed it?

_At least she couldn't have seen what I was looking at,_ he reassured himself. He'd closed out the holoscreen the instant the door opened, or else she'd have been shown the back view of his wife chained to a wall. That would have ended everything.

McLaren knew Harlaown's reputation, though. Hell, who didn't? One of the famous Three Aces, the only one who—until just days ago—had remained active in the field as the star of the Navy's Enforcement Bureau? Of all the people in the world to be surprised by with fear and worry clawing at his heart and tears welling up in his eyes, he had to pick the TSAB's top investigator!

What was he to do? How was he to react? Was she already asking questions about him? In her current position did she have the authority to start an investigation? Should he act now, get away? If he was arrested, what would Sonoma do to his family? Yet if Harlaown wasn't suspicious of him, then wouldn't panicking now just make her that way? What was he supposed to do?

~X X X~

"Major Gallardo, is something wrong with Captain McLaren?"

Hayate's aide glanced up in surprise.

"With McLaren?"

"I was just talking to him, and he seemed pretty worried about something."

"Hm. Well, his son's been pretty sick for a couple of days now. That could be it." He paused, then added, "I guess you'd know better than I would, Commodore; I don't have children."

"That could be it. One time when Caro had to be hospitalized with rheumatic fever I was almost crazy with panic. I'm never at my best when my loved ones have problems I can't fix," Fate admitted. "Of course, I was just seventeen at the time."

She suddenly smiled at him, a twinkle in her burgundy eyes.

"It's not as sordid as it sounds, Major. I adopted Erio and Caro when I was a teenager."

"I didn't—I mean, I wouldn't—" Gallardo stammered, then gave up. Fate just laughed.

"Don't worry; I'm used to it. When Nanoha and I were married, Hayate's toast included a shocking story about how I'd finally made Nanoha give my kids a name, making sure to mention that I'm only nine years older than they are but somehow omitting the 'adopted' part."

"General Yagami did—?"

"Of course, most of the wedding guests already knew all about the family history, but there were a few dropped jaws."

The smile vanished, though, as she looked down at her left hand and ran her thumb over her wedding ring.

"I wonder..."

~X X X~

Nervousness turned to worry and worry to panic as time ticked by. McLaren tried to set things aside, to concentrate on his work, but just couldn't. He could barely handle the pressure of knowing his family was in danger, let alone try to cope with the prospect of being caught out.

_Was he under suspicion?_

He wasn't a spy, wasn't a trained agent! He wasn't prepared for maintaining a cover story! He didn't even have a cause driving him, something to stiffen his will. Fear alone couldn't give him that clarity of purpose needed to act swiftly and decisively, any more than McLaren's love for his family could give him the skills and talent to help them.

For a brief moment, he was consumed by a towering resentment of Fate T. Harlaown. What would happen if it was _her_ family that was threatened? No doubt she'd use her investigative skills and her contacts inside and outside the TSAB to gather information, find out who was responsible, why they were doing it, and where and how her family was being held, then storm to the rescue using her S+ ranked magic to crush the villains in a heroic fight. It would be a damn Movie of the Week.

Whereas Georg McLaren, though he loved his family every bit as much as Harlaown loved hers, could do nothing but crawl like a worm for Sonoma's benefit since _he_ didn't have the power of a minor god at his fingertips or a pantheon of friends and allies of equal renown.

No, it wasn't just or fair, and perhaps some part of him even recognized it, but at that moment McLaren hated Harlaown almost as much as he hated Sonoma just because of what she could do that he could not.

~X X X~

"I'm sorry, Commodore Harlaown, but we've had no patient registered under that name during the last week," the hospital receptionist said.

"Thank you for checking. I appreciate the help."

"You're welcome, ma'am."

Fate shut down the communications screen.

"That's all seventeen of Cranagan's hospitals," she said. "No call to the family doctor, no emergency-room trip. Whatever's bothering Captain McLaren, it isn't his son's health. If he was that worried about it, he or his wife would have taken the boy in by now."

**"Religious reasons, sir?"** Bardiche suggested. The Intelligent Device was used to being a sounding board for Fate's ideas during her investigations, particularly when she didn't have an aide assigned to her.

"He's supposed to be a Belkan Saint Church member; they embrace the latest medico-magical technology."

She probably shouldn't be doing this, Fate knew. Running an internal security investigation was no part of a liaison officer's job. She had her own duties to get to, and if she didn't tackle them she'd either end up pulling an all-nighter at work or having to explain to Hayate why she was letting her friend down. But she'd spent more than half her life as an Enforcer and she couldn't just put the instincts developed over so many years away just because her job title had changed.

It was just a hunch. Hunches could be wrong. The subconscious mind noticing details and drawing conclusions, that was all they were, nothing magical or precognitive. But training and above all experience made a cop's intuition something she could count on, and that intuition told her something was very wrong with Georg McLaren. Something, from the way he'd been twisting his wedding ring on his finger without even realizing it, that had to do with his wife rather than his son.

A wife, who despite being a housewife that was supposedly at home with a sick boy, didn't answer calls to the house, the second of which she'd sent with a military priority flag and got an automated answer anyway.

"But the Church school verified that Mrs. McLaren had called them and said that Billy would be out sick for the next couple of days-and you need a doctor's authorization for an absence of more than one day or else the student loses all credit for any assignments or tests missed. I know that because Vivio goes to the same school."

She drummed her fingers on the desktop.

"Someone's lying, Bardiche."

**"Yes, sir."**

**~X X X~**

He couldn't take it any more. The walls of his office felt tight, like they were constricting him. The air was maintained to a precise quality and temperature by the environmental control systems, but it was still close, somehow choking. He needed fresh air.

If he was honest with himself, McLaren needed the illusion of freedom that being outside provided.

And yet he was terrified to leave his desk. Breaking his routine was an admission of guilt, wasn't it? One act out of place, he felt, would brand him as a traitor in everyone's eyes.

It was irrational, of course. If he'd had a chance to stop and think calmly he'd have realized that. McLaren was long past rational thought, though. _Calm_ was no more than a hypothetical concept. Guilt and fear had him in their grip.

When the communications link signaled to him, it nearly jolted him out of his chair. He mopped the sweat from his brow and took several deep breaths before he opened the screen.

"Commodore Harlaown, what can I do for you?"

"Can I see you in Major Gallardo's office, Captain? There's a security matter we need to discuss."

_A security matter_. It was as if a shard of ice had been driven into his heart.

"Yes, ma'am. When shall I be there?"

"Right away; it's an urgent situation."

"Of course, ma'am."

"Thank you, Captain."

She signed off, leaving him staring at the blank screen. That clinched it. He'd been right to be afraid; Harlaown was on to him. A trap was waiting for him in Gallardo's office, a trap to be followed with arrest and interrogation.

_What can I do?_ he thought. The only bright spot, one that only occurred to him after a few moments, was that they couldn't have proof of what he'd done. If they did there'd be no polite call or invitation to talk; there'd be an armed security team at his door to take him into custody. A trap was the only explanation, that they planned to make him give himself away.

The problem was, even a suspicion might trigger an investigation if it was strong enough, and an investigation might mean the end for his family. Of one thing he was convinced: Sonoma was eminently capable of carrying out his threats if displeased. If he thought he'd been betrayed, he _would_ kill them.

_If only I could warn him;_ McLaren thought, _somehow give him advance warning of this. A show of good faith so he'll let them go._ The idea was almost laughable, trusting to a vicious criminal's "good faith"! But it had another problem, even more serious. He had no way of contacting Sonoma. The kidnapper had made sure that any links between them were all one-way, unable to be traced.

Should he try to brazen it out? No, that was foolish. He wasn't trained for deception, and in his emotional state it was impossible to expect him to keep his cool. He'd probably give himself away a dozen times without even realizing it.

No, he decided as he got to his feet, he had only one thing to offer and that was time. They could investigate, but finding out what he'd done would take hours, perhaps even days of concerted effort by a computer security team; Sonoma's programmer had been skilled. Only if they had McLaren in custody could they force the information from him. Therefore he had to remain _out_ of custody for as long as possible. The logic was childishly simple.

He left his office and went down the hall to the bank of elevators. Getting out wasn't going to be easy. Even if all they had was suspicion, they'd take basic precautions, his ID would be flagged to set up an alarm at the exit checkpoints, and McLaren wasn't a mage, so it wasn't like he could fight his way out like in some action movie. His computing skills might have been more relevant, but he'd have needed time to prepare a program that would make the system ignore the flag on his identity code-time measured in hours, not the minutes he had.

_If I'd been a real spy, I'd have prepared something like that in advance and loaded it into the system already_, he realized. But of course, he wasn't a real spy. That was the problem.

What he needed was a false ID. Something that wouldn't trigger the security system at the building checkpoint. The guards were just grunts who let the equipment do the work, so if the ID was in the system there'd be no trouble. _Unless they'd been specially instructed to look for my face? Would they do that in a case of suspicion only? Would an Ace start bringing in ordinary guards so early in a case?_ That last thought came to him after a moment; he had no real idea what the ego of a "star" like Harlaown was like. Officers were a mixed bag.

_I can't doubt myself now_, he thought. This was the only idea he had with even a chance of working. There was no time to try and think of something else; he had to see it through.

And then, as if fate was rewarding his determination—or Hell was offering him the temptation for his final fall—something went right. There was someone there already, waiting for the elevators. Better yet, it was someone he knew, one of his own section.

"Good morning, Captain. Going up?"

"Nope, down."

Marcus Camry turned and reached out to press the elevator's Down button. In that instant, McLaren acted. He sprang, locking his forearm around the throat of the younger, smaller man. He might have been a computer specialist and an F-rank, but he was still a military officer, still had had basic training in combat-including hand to hand. Camry didn't even make a sound as his breath was choked off, blood flow to his brain blocked. He sagged into unconsciousness, his body going limp, becoming dead weight, and McLaren let it down to the floor.

"Sorry, Camry," he felt obliged to say while confirming that the man was still alive—it was all too easy to severely injure or even kill someone while applying a chokehold—"but right now I need this more than you do." He bent to take Camry's ID so he could switch them but he suddenly found himself staring down at a tall, muscular woman with long pink hair. _Transformation magic!_

"Testarossa was right," she said with satisfaction, before her hand fastened like a vice-grip on his wrist.

_A/N: Just for clarity's sake, Signum got one of her staff to cast the transformation spell on her; it's not something I'm implying that she knows herself._


	16. Chapter XV

"Vita-chan said what?" Nanoha exclaimed.

"That Aunt Hayate wants to recruit me for the Ground Forces, to fill a place on Signum's Sword Team, and that she's offering me a warrant officer's commission for it."

Vivio smiled at her mother. Figuring that there was no time like the present, she'd gotten permission to leave school grounds (sometimes it didn't completely suck to be the object of worship at a church school) and surprised Nanoha at the training grounds. Fate had made them Japanese-style bento boxes for their lunches, so chopsticks were moving rapidly in between speech, mother and daughter alike rapidly making food disappear.

"She asked you that this morning?"

"Mmn."

"But she didn't think to ask me?"

Vivio shook her head.

"Vita-sensei said that they cleared it with Fate-mama. I got the idea that they thought it was better, or at least safer, to see if I was even interested before letting you know the offer was on the table."

Nanoha let out a sigh.

"Mou, Fate-chan, how can you be so smart and still not see through Hayate-chan's tricks?" she said, making Vivio giggle.

"I guess she's just innocent that way?"

"So...since you're here, I guess this means that you _are_ interested?"

Vivio looked up at the clear blue sky, leaning back on the park bench they shared.

"Yeah...yeah, I am. I had some worried because it felt a little like Aunt Hayate was giving me something for nothing—"

Nanoha chuckled.

"Not if Signum-san is going to be your commanding officer, it won't be 'for nothing.'"

Vivio flashed her mother a quick smile. "That's what Vita-sensei hammered into my stubborn head." She laughed self-consciously. "Not literally, but it almost came to that."

Nanoha ruffled her daughter's hair.

"You two can be so much alike sometimes, such hard-nosed kids."

"Well, I am a defensive mage. I go into battle with the intent of preserving things exactly the way they are, so is it any wonder my thoughts work the same way?" Vivio joked.

"And while history was never my best subject, I'm pretty sure that god-kings were never all that good at admitting that they're wrong, so it's in the blood, too!" Nanoha chimed in, drawing a groan from her daughter.

They fell silent for a moment. A couple of curious blue-banded pigeons, little different from Earth's but for the color, settled nearby to see if either the girl or the woman was inclined to share their lunch.

"So," Nanoha finally said, "like I said before, I guess that since you're talking to me now, it means that you're interested in the offer?"

"Mmn. Though I'd have told you anyway."

"You would?" Nanoha was dubious, as well she might be, being the mother of a teenager. Full disclosure concerning the events of Vivio's life was not her usual expectation.

"Sure; this is important. We're talking about the course of my future here, and you're my mom." She suddenly realized how that might have sounded, and cursed. "Damn, now I have to apologize to Fate-mama."

"No, Fate-chan understands what you mean. Apologize to me for your language instead."

"...Sorry."

One of the pigeons decided to seek out better prospects and fluttered away.

"I don't know why everyone seems to expect you to go ballistic over this," Vivio continued.

Nanoha's smile came back.

"Isn't your usual refrain, 'I'm not a kid anymore; don't treat me like one'? If you really did become Sankt Kaiser, then I'd expect, 'Nanoha-mama is too strict!' to become one of the affirmations of faith."

Vivio laughed.

"Of _course_ you're too strict. Everyone knows that! But this isn't about silly mom stuff, but my future. You've never done anything but encourage me in my dreams. You enrolled me in the church school so I could get the best education in Belkan magic, you agreed to let me train under Vita-sensei, you let me become a military cadet and an officer candidate when you knew it would mean letting me go out on real combat missions. If you were against my taking Aunt Hayate's offer, it would be because you saw something about it that might work against me in the long run, not because you wanted to keep me home safe."

Nanoha looked at her wide-eyed for a long moment that extended into several seconds. Her lower lip began to tremble, and then she suddenly flung her arms around her daughter's shoulders and squeezed hard.

"Vivio!"

"Um...Nanoha-mama..." Vivio squirmed, embarrassed. _What did I say?_ she thought frantically, but couldn't come up with anything during the three minutes the clinging hug lasted. "Okaaaay, that was weird..." she said, red-faced, when Nanoha let go.

"Sorry." Nanoha wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Geez, what was that for?"

But Nanoha just shook her head and smiled that closed-mouth, I've-got-a-secret smile guaranteed to make whomever it was directed at grit their teeth in frustration.

"Can you at least promise not to do it again?"

"I think there won't be any more mom-related outbursts today," Nanoha assured her.

"Okay, then." Vivio sighed, shaking her head at the strangeness of mothers while still wondering what had touched Nanoha so deeply. Sometimes, life didn't make sense. "So what do you think about this offer, mama?"

"I think it's a good idea, unless you really had your heart set on a naval enlistment."

"Vita-sensei said almost the same thing."

"Vita-chan is a smart cookie. You'll never qualify for the Air Force, since you need to use one of your advanced device modes to fly. So it's the Navy or Ground Forces, although there's still all kinds of different sections, from mainline combat units to Environmental Resource Protection to the Enforcement Bureau."

"I've always wanted to be a front-line combat mage," Vivio said, "from the moment you came crashing into the Saint's Cradle to save me. Like the knights in fairytales and legends, fighting monsters and helping people. Like you, Nanoha-mama."

Nanoha shook her head.

"Uh-uh. Like Fate-chan."

"Eh?"

"We were talking about this a few nights ago. For me, using my power to help people is about _me—_it's a responsibility of having the power. I have this magic, so I go looking for good deeds to do. Fate-chan is the other way. She cares about people's suffering and wants to stop it."

"It all adds up to the same thing in the end, though," Vivio pointed out. "I mean, you're effectively no different from each other in what you do."

"Not exactly. It explains why for me, being a soldier in the field was only a step on my way to becoming a combat instructor, where I could help others to do their best and stay safe while Fate-chan's spent nearly two decades as a field agent, refusing any boost in position until now. She feels the need to help people directly, to directly see the results, while I can take the long view, knowing that I'm doing the most good indirectly. And," she grumbled, "it's why Fate-chan doesn't have a power limiter while _I'm_ stuck at A-rank because everyone thinks I'll fry my own body if they let me use all the power I want."

"Poor mama."

"Mou, even my own daughter!" she pouted, then smiled. "But the point is that this is your dream, and I approve. And if you really want to be a combat mage, I can't think of a better field commander for you to follow than Signum-san. Plus, if you're stationed here you can finish school properly without having to transfer _and_ keep living at home, which also makes me happy."

"It is a good offer. Vita-sensei says it's because of my scrying talent that they really want me."

"That makes sense. An elite unit needs a number of support functions to operate well."

Vivio understood that well enough, not just from her OCS small-unit tactics courses but from growing up in the house of the military's top instructor. Various scrying and information-gathering magic, barrier-setting, healing, teleportation, binding, and illusion magic all had their parts to play above and beyond simple attacks and defense.

"Is the Ground Forces really so strapped for specialist mages that they consider me a prize?"

"It's not just a lack of specialists, but ones who are also sufficiently capable combatants to function with the team. Very few of your fellow librarians, for example, have any kind of combat ability the way you and Yuuno-kun do. And the Ground Forces do have a prestige problem. While the Navy goes out and patrols the dimensions, the Ground Forces is seen as more of a security force for managing occupied areas. Even when it does act in a field action, it's as much about machines as it is about mages. It's the service which offers the most opportunity for F-ranks because of its scope of operations, but that also doesn't attract as many B-ranks and up.

"This is all part of what Reguis Gaiz was trying to correct, when he made the decision to make under-the-table allegiances with the Council and Jail Scaglietti, which eventually led to you being born. So in a way it's fitting that you'd join the Ground Forces, since Hayate-chan is now trying to fix those same problems, though hopefully in a more appropriate way."

Vivio nodded. She already knew most of that-dinner-table discussions with her extended family often turned to military politics given that all of them were TSAB officers—but it was nice to hear it so easily laid out.

She took pity on the pigeon and scattered some crumbs for it. The bird strutted over and began to peck happily.

"So...do you think I should do it?"

"That depends on you." Nanoha was in full "mama" mode, refusing to give a yes/no answer to a question she wanted Vivio to think over.

"Mama!" she groaned, but Nanoha just patted her on the shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Vivio, but that's really the only thing I can say. So far your missions have all been chosen as being suitable for a cadet who's still learning. They varied in difficulty but for all of them the best intelligence available suggested that they were within your training and ability. When the Sword Team deploys, there are no guarantees. Only you can decide if you're really ready for full-time service."

"I'm six years older than you and Fate-mama were when you started," she pointed out.

"Yes, but it was circumstance, not planning that dragged us into the Jewel Seed and Book of Darkness incidents. Those were emergencies that had to be dealt with immediately, and forced our hands."

"Erio and Caro joined RF6 as forwards at ten."

Nanoha nodded.

"Both of them had had very hard lives before Fate-chan found them, which made them ready...no, _needing_ to face reality. Doing that while surrounded by friends and people that love them was better than trying to create an illusory childhood that they'd already matured beyond. Everyone is different, Vivio."

The blonde girl smiled.

"I know. I just want easy answers," she admitted.

"There aren't a lot of those when you're making major life decisions."

"No, I guess not."

"So...other things to consider...If you're looking to gain in experience and in actual knowledge, it's obviously a good decision; working under Signum you'll genuinely learn rather than sit there watching your commander have no idea what she's doing. In fact, there's really only one reason I can think of to turn the offer down."

"What's that?"

"Independence."

She didn't have to explain.

"You mean, if it really matters to me that I make my own way, I should turn Aunt Hayate down, work my way up, and preferably seek out some Naval posting where I get sent to the far ends of dimensional space, to sink or swim on my own without my family as backup?"

"Exactly."

Vivio smiled and shook her head.

"No, I already had that meltdown today. I don't need to push all of you away to prove to myself that I can fly alone; I know that I can in my heart, and that's enough."

Nanoha smiled.

"I guess this means that you really are growing up." She sounded almost wistful about it.

"Probably a side effect of good parenting."

Nanoha chuckled.

"So, my little girl is going to be a commissioned officer, huh?"

"It looks like it. This really does look like a great chance, and you know the saying, 'the beggar shouldn't haggle over charity.'"

"'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth,'" Nanoha returned an Earth quote for the Belkan one. She popped a carrot slice into her mouth and grinned. "It's been a good week. Fate-chan moved home _and_ you're taking a promotion while _not_ moving away. I should send Hayate-chan a thank-you gift."

"Sounds good! Can I pick!"

The Takamachis blinked in surprise; a communications screen had opened off to Vivio's side in time for Hayate to hear Nanoha's last comment.

"Hayate-chan, did you need something?" Nanoha wondered curiously.

"Actually, I was calling for Vivio." That explained the screen's location; after a second Vivio realized it had appeared like that because Hayate was using a military operations channel rather than an ordinary call link.

"Nanoha-mama and I were just talking over your offer, Aunt Hayate," she said. "I've decided to accept."

Hayate beamed.

"That's great news! Rein can have the commission entered and your status upgraded before you get here."

"Before I get there? You need me right away?"

"Yes and no. I mean, your duties as a Sword Team member won't start right away, but I was actually calling because I need a favor...Your Majesty."

"Ehhh?"

~X X X~

_A/N: It was pointed out to me when I was posting the draft chapters that this chapter repeats several things from the Vita/Vivio exchange from before. And the fact is, that's true: Vivio basically asks Nanoha the same questions all over again. I suppose that's not really surprising, given that Vita is a teacher-mentor figure for Vivio in the "Steel Queen Chronicle" stories. But ultimately, the chapter really isn't about Vivio deciding to take the job (honestly, it's pretty clear that she was going to pounce on it unless Nanoha came up with something extremely significant that she'd completely overlooked), it's about the relationship between mother and daughter._

_I seem to hit that childhood/adulthood theme a lot in my Nanoha fics. I guess it just comes out of me staring at the utter incongruity of making people who haven't reached puberty yet into frontline military troops—heck, even officers, on occasion. It kind of explains why Hayate and Genya had the conversation they did at the airport fire site, about how mages' military ranks were largely for show—I mean, can you imagine the United States military being run by people who didn't even have a high school education? Particularly in an advanced, modern technological society? And so many of the younger cast—Nanoha, Fate, Hayate, Erio, Caro, Lutecia—had such messed-up childhoods that Vivio would really stand out compared to them, and in her more "normal" upbringing's effects._


	17. Chapter XVI

"It's here," Pacer said. "Daimler's on his way into the city with it."

Solstice's face lit up with triumph. Sonoma remained reserved; too many years of stifling his emotions in the face of outsiders had left him without the quick, reflexive show of emotion even among his associates.

Besides, what was the point? The only thing that had happened was that the next step in the plan imagined by him and mapped out by Pacer had fallen properly into place. That was the _point_ of a good plan.

"Everything's set for tomorrow, then," he said.

"I wish we could act _now_," Solstice exclaimed.

"If we don't stick to the schedule, it won't work."

"I know that," the blonde woman snapped. "It's just...the chance to finally visit a taste of the pain we've suffered on those TSAB bastards! I've been waiting my whole _life_ for this day."

"Personally, I'm glad. It'll give Daimler and I the chance to get used to the Nest," Pacer said.

"I thought you'd been working on the control sims Celica sent us?"

"We have, but hands-on is never exactly the same as the sims. Every machine's got its individual quirks that don't get picked up in a sim based on the generic specs. Wish we had time for a shakedown cruise, but there's going to be one and only one active run on this job."

He glanced at Solstice.

"Who's the most trusted fighter among your stable of local talent?"

"Sean Martin, probably. Mage-talented, and though he's a student he believes in the cause."

Sonoma shrugged.

"That's the best time to draw them in," he noted. "When they're outside the workaday world they still have a chance to believe in right and wrong. Once they start having to earn their own way it usually takes their own suffering to bring them around." He smiled humorlessly. "I've been there myself, you see."

"I'm not interested in his ideological roots," Pacer said. "I just want someone else to help me keep an eye on the situation. The Nest can handle itself well enough, but I can't see it dodging the military and police through the city for a day."

"He'll do," Solstice said, then smiled wickedly. "Just think, by this time tomorrow, those TSAB bastards will have the chance to apologize in person to the dead of Jarentil."

~X X X~

Captain McLaren had remained stubbornly mute through the first two hours of interrogation. Harlaown and Signum had both hammered at him with questions and accusations—even, at once point, that he'd murdered his own family!—until he'd wanted to leap from the chair and scream, but he'd dug his nails into his palms, gritted his teeth, and said nothing.

He wanted to tell them everything, to get it off his chest in a purifying flood of truth, but no matter how badly the need for confession plagued him he held his tongue. It was all that he could do at this point. Eventually they'd taken him back to his cell, where he'd stayed for another hour before they dragged him out again.

This time, though, neither the Naval Liaison Officer nor the Sword Team Commander were present in the interrogation room. Instead there was a blonde girl, taller than either of them but with a coltish gangliness to her that put her in her mid-teens, no older. She didn't wear a uniform, instead standing before him in a Barrier Jacket: blue-gray bodysuit under a blue-piped black dress, with blued-steel gauntlets and a vambrace on her right forearm. Her hair was up in a lopsided ponytail tied with a blue ribbon.

She gestured to one of the hard-backed chairs. Once he sat, she leaned across the table towards him, looking him full in the face.

"Georg McLaren, my name is Takamachi Vivio. Do you know who I am?"

He stared full into her heterochromatic red and green eyes and felt his heart rise into his throat.

"Your...Majesty?" he whispered, awestruck.

~X X X~

_Twenty Minutes Ago_

"You want me to _what_?" To say that Vivio was surprised by Hayate's request was far understating the point.

"I think you heard me or else you wouldn't be yelping like that," Hayate answered, showing Vivio the mischievous smile that inevitably meant that she was up to something.

"Okay, yes, but...Aunt Hayate, I don't know anything about interrogating a suspect."

She glanced at her mother for help, but Fate shook her head.

"I'll be here watching, and can prompt you heart-to-heart if there's something I think you need to say or do."

"But why me?"

Hayate glanced at Fate.

"Does she have memory issues? Shamal said that Vita hit her pretty hard in practice the other day..."

"You're merciless," Vivio sighed.

"Of course I am. It's why they keep pinning stars on me. Seriously, Vivio, I know that you'd rather gnaw your arm off than play Sankt Kaiser, but it's kind of a unique role. I could ask Carim to come in, but even though she represents a religious, moral authority instead of just a legal one, she's still a human being doing a job. If you talk to him, it's something different. You're not just an agent of authority, you _define_ authority, at least to faithful Saint Church believers like Captain McLaren."

Vivio exhaled heavily. She couldn't deny Hayate's point, much as she didn't like to admit it.

"All right," she gave in. "What do I need to know?"

"Captain McLaren is the CCDF's Data Engineering Section, Systems Maintenance Group Supervisor. That gives him direct physical access to the network core, and we think he may have done something," Fate explained. She opened a screen. "This is from the surveillance record in the core chamber two days ago during routine maintenance. Do you see here? It looks like he's attaching a standard data drive to his interface unit. No one gave it a second notice at the time, since who's going to suspect a computer maintenance engineer using computer devices? We had to show the video to his own subordinates to verify that he wasn't working within procedure."

"I've ordered the data section to begin an immediate priority search to see if they can figure out what he did, but that could take hours, days, or weeks depending on what he did and how well he did it," Hayate contributed.

"Is he a spy, then? Or a computer terrorist?" Vivio asked, getting excited despite herself.

"We don't know. That's what we hope he'll tell you."

"There's another angle to it. Something's wrong where his family is concerned," Fate noted.

"His family?"

"Your mother got one of her hunches," Hayate said. "McLaren's family was the loose thread that she pulled on to get us where we're at. His wife and son are missing—at least missing from _our_ point of view—and he'd lied about why. But his wife lied, too: she told the Saint Church school that the boy was going to be staying home sick and it's apparently not true."

Vivio glanced from Hayate to Fate.

"Do you mean that, maybe they vanished on purpose? Ran away because of what he did or was planning to do? To meet up with him later? Or do you think he...?" Vivio surprised herself there. She _believed _herself to be a tough-minded, cynical young woman, but apparently she was still enough of a bright-blue-skies-and-sparkly-pink-magic girl to choke on the words, _murdered them_.

Fate understood at once; her crimson eyes were gentle. Vivio always was surprised at how kind such a threatening color could look.

"I thought at first that he might have done that, and maybe he did—if she found out about what he was doing, for example. But I don't believe that's it."

"Why, Fate-mama?"

"Partly intuition and what I'm guessing about his responses, but it's mostly because it was Mrs. McLaren who called the school and told one of what we think are the lies."

Vivio nodded.

"All right. Is there anything else I need to know?"

"His wife's name is Eileen, their son's William, but they call him Billy."

"Okay, I'll try my best. Um, I left my uniform at home, though. I didn't expect to need it." Her jeans, sneakers, and T-shirt featuring two bunnies meeting on a dark street corner didn't really make the kind of impression the situation called for.

Apparently, though, neither did her cadet uniform.

"That's all right; it wouldn't work for two reasons," Hayate said.

"Why not?"

"When McLaren sees you, I don't want him to think of the TSAB military. I want him to think of you only as the Sankt Kaiser, nothing that would make him bring you down to a human level. Don't use military rank when talking to him; stick to just names unless it's a church rank."

Vivio nodded.

"I'll remember that. What's the other reason?"

Hayate grinned at her.

"Don't you know? It's a violation of military regulations for personnel to wear a uniform other than that which is appropriate for their service branch and current assignment. So, you see, I can't have you running around in a cadet uniform, Warrant Officer Takamachi."

Vivio's eyes widened, then she snapped off a salute worthy of the parade ground.

"Yes, ma'am, General Yagami!"

~X X X~

"They know about the network core, Georg," Vivio said to him. He stared back at her in a mixture of fear and awe, as well he might. An interrogation he might have expected, maybe even the use of violence or mind probes if his captors were willing to throw out the rules. Not a semi-divine visitation.

"They don't know precisely what, yet, but sooner or later they'll find out. They know how and when you did it, so they'll be able to track your steps."

_Keep it about him, Vivio,_ Fate warned.

"This is your last chance, Georg. Once the truth comes out the only thing left for you will be your punishment. No one will be interested in what you have to say. There will be no bargains, no chance to make a confession."

Her own words sparked an idea.

_Aunt Hayate, do I count as a priest?_

_In what way?_

_Under the rules of the Saint Church, can I act as a priest, perform sacraments, and so on?_

She could hear the chuckle in Hayate's mental "voice."

_I should hope so; they work _for _you._

_My history reading suggested that, since the Sankt Kaiser was the head of the Church and State together, but I didn't know how that worked under formal canon law._

The chuckle came back.

_Just say what you need to, Vivio, and if it becomes necessary I'll nag Carim into okaying it so you won't be a liar._

"You can't keep this inside, you know," she told him. "I know what kind of man you are. A soldier, a husband, a father, a church-goer. All your life you've tried to do the right thing, tried to be the kind of person you should. You know this is wrong, don't you?"

He tried to glance away, but she reached out, cupped the side of his face and made him face her.

"No, Georg; look at me. You can't hide from me or make it go away. You have to confess what you've done. This is your last chance to repent your sins while you can still make reparations to your victims. You know the difference between those two things-and you also know what it means to have this chance and voluntarily throw it away of your own will. There'll be no mistake, no illusions, nothing at all to mitigate your sin. You'll be damning yourself with your silence."

Making him face her meant that Vivio saw the blow hit home, the dilating of his pupils from shock. His lips trembled; for the first time it looked like he was going to say _something_ in response to an interrogator's question. Vivio's own stomach lurched at the look of sick fear on the man's face and fought hard to keep her self-disgust from showing. _Remember that this guy's a spy or terrorist,_ she told herself firmly. _Sure, he's scared, because he's committed real crimes._

A convulsive shudder ran through McLaren.

"I _can't_!" burst from him.

"Yes, you can," she said immediately.

"No...you don't understand, Your Majesty!" he all but wailed. Hayate's scheme had worked in at least one way; already unused to the stress of keeping secrets and being under suspicion, being confronted with a semi-deity was tipping McLaren over an emotional edge. Vivio was just afraid that it wasn't leading to confession, but a breakdown.

_Make him explain it to you, Vivio,_ Fate prompted.

"Then make me understand, Georg. Tell me why you can't confess the truth even to me."

For a moment it seemed as if that question, too, would go unanswered, but Vivio kept her gaze firmly locked on his and the answer slipped from his lips. "...He'll kill them. They'll kill them if I tell!"

"He? Them? Who?"

"My family! My wife and son! He kidnapped them, threatened them if I didn't do what he said! Eileen...she's pregnant again, Your Majesty. The kind of monsters that could do this..."

_Fate-mama?_

_It would explain it, I'll give him that. The disappearances, the lies...but not with certainty._

Gently, as if she was comforting a child, she stroked her palm over his hair.

"And you're trapped between loyalties, aren't you, Georg? The people here will understand that," she said. "Hayate and Fate understand what it's like to have to make those kind of choices. But they need to know that it's true. Is there anything you can show them? Any proof?"

McLaren gulped, then nodded,

"There's...He gave me pictures of them, RealImage-coded stills. I put them on my office computer in a stealthed directory." He gave the required location and access code.

_We'll check it out_, said Fate.

"Please, Your Majesty, don't let them do anything. If he thinks I've talked..."

"Don't worry," Vivio said. "Fate-mama wouldn't do anything to endanger your family." The "mama" just slipped out reflexively, before she could think of it, but McLaren never understood, maybe didn't even hear, for he'd already broken down. The need to maintain silence had been the only thing holding his emotions in check, and now that he'd talked there was nothing more to keep the stress, the terror, and the guilt from overwhelming him.

The Sankt Kaiser opened her arms and gathered the weeping man to her breast like he was a tiny child.


	18. Chapter XVII

"The RealImage coding is intact, Commodore," Lieutenant Camry said. Fate had called up the stills from McLaren's computer easily enough once he'd said how to find them, but validating the images was an expert's job. Some people, she knew, might not care, but it mattered to her whether McLaren was a conspirator or just another victim. She had a feeling, given her pink-haired companion a sidealong glance, that it mattered to Signum, too. Both women had committed acts in the past that some would call "bad" or even "evil" for the sake of family.

For that matter, even a more callous investigator would care about the truth of McLaren's claim. It made a serious difference in determining the best way to handle him.

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Fate said. "You can go now."

"Yes, ma'am." Camry rose from the desk chair, then paused and glanced at the images again. "Commodore...you'll stop whomever did this, won't you? We...all of us in the section like Mrs. McLaren; she's a nice lady."

Fate didn't answer.

"This isn't your affair, Lieutenant," Signum told him flatly.

"Yes, ma'am."

He left, with another glance at the screen but no more words.

"Testarossa?"

"Eh?"

Signum folded her arms across her chest, directing a keen glance at the blonde.

"I've known you too long for games, Testarossa. You're already trying to think of a way to save them. A kid in trouble and a pregnant woman? That's like a magnet for you."

"It seems to me that you once went very far out of your way to save a dying girl."

"It wasn't a complaint. Besides, wouldn't the fastest way to get McLaren to talk be to rescue them? Seems to me he'd give us anything we asked for in that case. Presuming that we didn't make the whole thing moot by taking out the enemy during the rescue."

"You make it sound like we'd be doing it entirely out of self-interest."

"Just because something is the sentimental choice doesn't mean it has to be the impractical choice. None of we Wolkenritter will ever forget that."

Fate looked at Signum in surprise. Her old friend and rival wasn't the type at all to express comfort in words. The pink-haired woman didn't explain or elaborate, though.

"You're right," Fate said. "I do want to rescue them. But it's not like there's a convenient evil lair to charge into."

"You're the detective."

"I'm..." She shrugged. "It's worth a try; the computer teams might or might not be able to solve this anytime soon. Bardiche, link to this machine and copy all images in the active directory."

**"Yes, sir."**

"Seeing that they went to the trouble of guaranteeing that these are true-to-life images, we may as well see just how much life they put in them."

~X X X~

"Here you go." Daimler pitched the paper bag containing the take-out order into Martin's lap as he climbed into the hauler's cab. Once settled on the seat he slotted the drinks into the cupholders.

"Nothing for yourself?"

Daimler pulled a face.

"Who'd have figured the hardest part of this whole operation would be trying to find a vegetarian meal at a truck stop?"

"You're too picky, Mike," Martin said, plucking a French fry out of the bag to illustrate his point.

"Ugh. When the food has grease stains soaking through the bag, I'll pass."

"So you want vegetarian _and_ good for you? Lot to expect from a greasy spoon." Martin bit off half the fry and chewed contentedly. "And under the circumstances, don't you think worrying about your long-term heart health is a little silly?"

Daimler thought that over, then broke into a laugh.

"You've got a point there," he said as he gunned the motor. "Give me some of those fries."

"Hell, no. Get your own!"

~X X X~

"If this is an internal security investigation, my office should have been conducting it," Michele Deusenberg snapped testily. "I'm going to be making a formal complaint."

Fate kept herself from sighing. Frankly, if the SIB hadn't had the proper lab software for photographic analysis she wouldn't have bothered with them at all.

What kept her from getting overly irritated at Lt. Colonel Deusenberg's attitude was the fact that she'd been on the other side of the argument many a time in her past. Just as in her last case on Jarentil, the JFP had stepped into responsibilities that were supposed to be hers and not only got in the way of her jurisdiction but also screwed up the case. She could sympathize with Deusenberg. An investigation into wrongdoing by a Ground Forces officer inside HQ was supposed to be run by Special Investigations, and definitely not by someone wearing a blue Navy uniform, ex-Enforcer or not.

"Go ahead, but remember that General Yagami personally assigned this matter to me. That's because I was the one who discovered something was wrong and she wants notice kept to as small a circle as possible." That was even more important now, if the kidnappers had any kind of information source within the CCDF, because of the kidnapping. "The General's ex-SIB, after all. She wouldn't be making an end run around you without good reason."

The reminder seemed to cool Deusenberg's ire, if not her resentment at having a bluecoat stepping on her jurisdictional toes.

"So what do you need?"

"An analysis workstation and a couple of walls, that's all."

"Right. Marcy," she waved over an aide, "please show the _Commodore_ to an unoccupied cubicle."

"Yes, ma'am," the younger woman said, a bit hesitantly. Fate's Navy uniform got the once-over from her, too. "This way, ma'am."

Fate followed the aide to a bank of cubicles, two-thirds of which were in use by tan-clad SIB investigators and technicians. She was pointed to one of the empty ones, so she took her seat, thanked the aide, and went to work uploading the pictures from Bardiche to the workstation.

McLaren still wasn't providing any specifics about what had happened to his family even though he'd broken down and confessed the threat against them. If there was a clue to their location, it would have to be here in the pictures. RealImage coding had been originally developed for police use, because digital manipulation of images was so simple that their evidentiary value was nil. The process had spread rapidly to other government agencies and thence to the general public. Undoubtedly criminals were already trying to find some way around it, but for now it made reliable insurance that what was shown in the image was what was in front of the camera, without digital trickery or illusion magic.

The coding guaranteed to McLaren that his family really was held captive, but Fate hoped that, just maybe, the pictures showed more than the kidnappers hoped they did.

_All right, we'll start with an analysis of the lighting_, she decided. If there was natural light, it could help indicate location, when combined with the date/time stamp. If there was no natural illumination, it told them something else.

She tried not to look at the faces too closely as she examined the details. There was a time to see the forest for the trees, but this wasn't it. If she had kept thinking about how this was a seven-year-old child chained up to a wall—

_And I'm doing such a good job of setting it aside_, she thought ruefully.

The lighting results came back as artificial sources in every picture, standard incandescent bulbs. Fate then began to check for reflected images, anything that might expand on the scene depicted. She doubted there'd be anything obvious; she had a solid impression that the kidnappers weren't amateurs at this. Bits and pieces, though, could add up.

~X X X~

"I've got them!"

Hayate could barely keep from giggling as Fate burst into her office, moving so fast that she nearly hit the edge of the sliding door before it had fully opened.

"Who?"

"Mrs. McLaren's kidnappers. It took the better part of four hours, but I know where they're holding her."

Hayate allowed herself a smile; she'd only asked because Fate was so keyed up she'd forgotten to say, not because Hayate didn't actually know. The blonde reminded her of nothing so much as a bloodhound with the scent of its quarry, and the general had to wonder if this was what Fate was really meant for, if it was a mistake to urge her into accepting the position transfer.

_Ah, well, there's time enough to worry about that once we deal with the current crisis._

"And you came rushing up to tell me in person?"

"I need your authorization to stage a rescue."

"I meant, why didn't you just call me?"

"Oh. I didn't want to report in from the middle of SIB. I thought I'd pulled rank on Lt. Colonel Deusenberg enough for one day."

"That was very polite of you, Commodore Harlaown," Rein piped up, "but you should knock before coming into Mistress's office."

Hayate's smile grew; she bit her lip to keep from laughing at her device's obsession with protocol. And after all, when you got right down to it, Rein's personality made more sense for an artificial intelligence than, say, Agito's did.

"Explain it to me, Fate-chan."

"It was the plumbing that got me started," she said. "First off, there was the simple fact that we can see utility conduits at all in the picture, which means they're being held in some kind of basement."

Screens popped up around her, with blue and green highlights indicating her point.

"See this one?" she pointed to an oversized pipe about three feet to the left of an image of Eileen. "That isn't a water or sewer line. It's a conduit for a high-capacity power supply. _This_ is a water line." In two other stills a much smaller pipe near the ceiling lit up. "You can tell by the valve here. Now what does that tell you, high power capacity with low water availability?"

"It's not a residence or office building," Hayate realized. "You'd need more water with a higher concentration of people."

"Right. Now, I could be wrong-if this pipe is just a spur feeding something in the basement, for example-but it's likely we're looking at some kind of industrial facility, largely automated, explaining the need for high quantities of power but with a low human presence."

"There's a fair number of those on Mid," Hayate noted dryly.

"True. At least we know that she's being held in the Cranagan metropolitan area."

"We do?"

Fate nodded. With a few keystrokes she highlighted and zoomed in on a portion of one of the images.

"See that stamp on that connection? CMPC—Cranagan Municipal Power Company."

Hayate brightened.

"There you go, Fate-chan. Acronyms can be your friends, too."

"So we're in the city, in an industrial facility. Narrowing it down was a lot harder, but it turned out to be staring me in the face the whole time."

"Oh?"

"The brickwork of the walls behind them. I ran it through some of SIB's analysis database for Mid architecture and with the style and pattern, plus the level of weathering shown on the mortar, I can narrow down the time at which the facility was constructed to within a decade with over ninety-eight percent confidence. That gave me a list of seventeen possibles from the Cranagan city planning records. I have to say, the SIB's records were very complete, even more than ours were at Enforcement."

"They always were. Since the Ground Forces investigators didn't have access to a lot of overkill magic, they made up for it as best they could with their information resources. Anyway, go on. You said that you'd reduced the list to seventeen likely possibilities."

Fate nodded.

"I eliminated twelve of those right away because they were still in active use as industrial plants. That isn't the type of place where you can easily stash someone in the basement. Too much activity, too many people going around in too many areas. Unless the espionage is corporate in nature and everyone at the plant, or at least the senior and security staff, is involved." Fate shrugged.

"Not likely," Hayate agreed. "We don't live in a cyberpunk dystopia where corporations basically constitute governments unto themselves. Engage in a little bribery and influence-peddling to support their interests, yes, but not major operations against core military functions."

Fate nodded.

"Of the other five, three are abandoned with utility services shut off, so even if they were being used, the kidnappers would have to bring their own lights, which wouldn't match the lighting seen in these images. Besides, abandoned anythings don't make good hideouts in urban environments. Sooner or later, someone will start wondering why all the people are coming and going." The blonde blushed, probably remembering that her friend had several years' experience as an investigator herself. "Sorry about the lecture, Hayate."

"It's okay, Fate-chan. Besides, I'm sure that Rein finds it fascinating."

"It's like watching the finale of a detective movie," Rein contributed, which made Fate's blush deepen until she was as red as Hayate had ever seen without Nanoha being somehow involved.

"A-anyway, that left two possibilities. Both properties had been sold to new owners. One is a trendy nightclub called the Steel Room, fairly popular among the young and edgy, while the other is being converted to a shopping center...which involved major renovation work on the basement and foundations to accommodate the new needs, and in addition routinely has ongoing construction work."

"If the nightclub is popular, it would have hundreds of people going in and out every night," Rein said.

"But not in the offices or utility space, only in the areas for the customers. All it would take is for the management to be the kidnappers, and criminals being involved in running entertainment venues is an old, old story."

"Who owns the Steel Room?"

"A real-estate holding company called Cantata Ventures. Their registered address is a law firm which specializes in setting up small, closely held companies for private individuals. I didn't call them in case they'd tip their clients that we were asking, but we'll probably want a warrant for their records to make sure we don't miss anyone, if the Steel Room proves to be what we're after."

Hayate nodded.

"We'll want to stage a rescue operation as soon as possible. Every minute that passes is more time for them to move the hostages or kill them outright."

"I obtained the blueprint schematics for the building; when it was converted to a club the owners had to file them with the city."

Hayate nodded again, then opened a link.

"Signum, Fate-chan's found a likely location for the McLarens. Have a primary strike unit ready to move in thirty minutes, with a secondary line of support."

"Yes, Mistress!" Signum said, showing something that could almost be called enthusiasm.

"Make sure to grab Vivio. Under the circumstances, you're going to need her."

"That's true, Mistress."

"Good. Fate-chan will give you the full details of what she's learned."

Hayate cut the link.

"Good work, Fate-chan. I admit, I didn't expect that I'd end up needing your Enforcer skills in your new job, but it certainly worked out all right."

"I'd...prefer you wait to thank me until we come back with the hostages safe."

_Blast, I knew she'd take it that way._

"Fate-chan," Hayate said as gently as she could, "you're not going."

"What?" Crimson eyes widened in shock. Fate looked like Hayate had just slapped her.

"This is Signum's job now, Fate-chan," Hayate told her. "You're going to have to wait it out."

"But _why_?"

For almost anyone else, Hayate wouldn't have bothered to justify her actions. She was the commander and the decision of force deployment was hers. For Fate's sake, though, she wanted to explain.

_That's the problem with having friends work for you. Lines get blurred._

"Three reasons. Two of them are good reasons but weak; one is very strong but you won't like it."

"That many reasons—and you've thought them all out already?"

"I thought them out this afternoon; I knew you'd want to be part of the rescue team, Fate-chan."

She sighed.

"Reason number one is that this is a military field operation, a raid by a commando team on an enemy location. Infiltrate and strike. You're a powerful mage and the best close-quarters fighter in the TSAB, but you're not part of the Sword Team. You're not experienced in operating with them as a unit. As useful as your power would be, that unfamiliarity would limit everyone's ability to operate."

"You ordered Signum to take _Vivio_ along, Hayate. She doesn't have any more experience with the team than I do, and she's nowhere near as powerful a mage."

"And she's the unit's scryer—an ability you don't have—and she can instantly pacify the hostages in a way no one else on the planet can." Idly, Hayate added, "She's going to kill me for making her play Sankt Kaiser twice in one day. Signum will make sure her responsibilities are kept clear, and Vivio will do what she's told. Which brings me to reason number two. Could you genuinely make yourself follow Signum's orders to the letter and not exceed their scope? I don't even recall you _being_ in a position where you were strictly a subordinate to the field commander, ever."

Hayate didn't mention the further effect of Fate and Signum's personal dynamic, their two decades of friendly rivalry or the fact that _Fate_ had been _Signum's_ squad leader during the one time they had been assigned together. Knowing Fate, she'd think of it on her own without Hayate having to press the point.

She felt bad enough about the third reason; there was no need to push it with the other two.

"You're right, Hayate; I didn't like that one at all. But you've got a good point, too. I don't want to risk the McLarens' lives out of my own pride and need to keep the case to myself." She gave Hayate a sad little smile. "You'd better tell me the other good reason to cheer me up."

"Fate-chan, those..._were_ the two good reasons."

Hayate considered leaving it there, giving Fate the chance to leave then. Then she faced facts. Naval Liaison Officer was a political job and she wasn't doing Fate any favors by shielding her from political realities.

"I want the Sword Team to do this alone because this is their first field operation, their _first_, and I don't want them to owe their success to the Navy's top Ace. This is supposed to be the CCDF's elite special-ops unit, a celebrated, high-profile group, the kind of thing that a young cadet aspires to join."

Fate reacted about how Hayate had expected her to: with incredulity and distaste.

"You mean..._publicity_?" She looked like she'd bitten into a lemon.

Hayate smiled wanly.

"I told you that you wouldn't like it."

"I don't," Fate told her flatly.

"But you understand, don't you?"

She held Hayate's gaze for over thirty seconds before her eyes dropped.

"...Yes, I do. I don't like it at all, but I can see where you're coming from. In your current position, you can't just deal with one thing at a time but have to manage multiple concerns at all times. But...have you considered this, Hayate? What if your elite force can't actually do the job?"

Fate seemed to have set aside the previous concerns about whether her presence with the team would be a net gain or loss, and Hayate didn't bring it up again. She only folded her hands on the desk, looked up at her old friend, and said, "If these kidnappers are so dangerous that they can't be stopped by a full squad of A-ranked mages led by Signum, then the McLaren family is the least of our worries."


	19. Chapter XVIII

Twilight had settled in over Cranagan, and the brightest lights outside the transport helicopter's window came from the lights of the city just setting ablaze. Humanity's defense against the encroaching darkness was to drown it out in light of their own creation until it was no longer something to be feared.

Takamachi Vivio wondered if there was some light out there that worked the same way for more tangible worries. Butterflies seemed to be hammering off the inside of her stomach like someone was playing pinball in her belly-and why not? She'd been on combat missions in the past as a cadet, but this was the first time she'd ever approached a battle zone as a member of a regular military unit. Cadet missions were carefully scrutinized for circumstances a trainee could handle, while this was the exact opposite. She wondered if her mother had ever been nervous before a battle and decided, regretfully, that she probably hadn't. Any nerves Nanoha had were probably over whether she'd arrive in time to stop whatever bad stuff was going down before it was too late.

_That_ thought just made the butterflies kick in their afterburners. Something _else_ to worry over.

Vivio pulled her mind back to reality. She couldn't afford to miss out on Signum's instructions!

"Unfortunately, here in Cranagan we can't maintain a dimension-shift barrier, but we can enclose the area in a containment barrier to prevent escape. That will be the support team's responsibility." She turned to the captain who was the senior member of the secondary squad's dozen mages. "Make sure you raise it only on my signal, as we make our initial assault. If it goes up early it will tip our hand."

"Yes, Colonel."

"Strike team: when we deploy, Warrant Officer Takamachi will scry the site to verify the presence of the hostages and the location of possible targets. The Steel Room doesn't open for customers until eight, so the number of possible bystanders should be minimal. Still, we can't be certain who is or is not involved in the kidnapping, so your instructions are to challenge targets and take prisoners, engaging only if you meet resistance. Stay in communication at all times." She fixed her gaze on Vivio. "Takamachi, your assignment is to proceed directly to the hostages. Don't stop to engage unless you're forced to; your job is to get to the McLarens, free them, and get them out. Concentrate on shielding them and don't worry about anything else."

Vivio nodded.

"Yes, ma'am."

That was good, she thought. Keep it simple, so she didn't have to worry about in-battle coordination with the rest of the unit. And her defensive magic was well-suited to protecting the McLarens while the others dealt with the enemies.

She glanced around at the other strike team members, her comrades for this mission and quite probably the next few years-if she didn't botch this entirely. It wasn't just Signum she wanted to look good for, she admitted to herself. Indeed, Signum was one of the least important of the group in that respect. The leader of the Wolkenritter was family, after all, and family forgave mistakes. For the other Sword Team members, though, this was Vivio's one and only chance to make a first impression and she absolutely wanted it to be a good one. Vivio desperately didn't want to be _the clumsy rookie—_or worse yet, _only here because she's the Commander's pet_.

There hadn't been time for more than the most cursory introductions before they'd deployed, making Vivio wish she'd spent the time between the interrogation and the call to action in getting to know her teammates. Sword-5 (Vivio's own call sign was to be Sword-6 for this mission) was First Lieutenant Melinda Yaris, a whiplike twenty-five-year-old with short yellow hair, a Mid-style shooting mage. Sword-4 had the same style, though Captain Reichart Mustang was nearly thirty, with a square jaw lightly dusted with blue stubble. Sword-3 was the only Modern Belkan user on the team, and the first one Vivio had met who used a ball-and-chain weapon for a device. Second Lieutenant Iria Renault was also the closest to Vivio in age, being no more than twenty and probably not even that. Her pixie face reminded Vivio somewhat of her adopted sister Caro.

Sword-2, at least, required no introduction. Still, seeing the giant blue wolf sitting next to Signum, Vivio found it hard to reconcile the image of Zafira with the kindly, mock-stern babysitter of her childhood. This Zafira had nothing mock in his sternness; she could scarcely believe that he was the same "Zaffy" she'd innocently played fetch with or tried to tie ribbons in his fur as a little girl.

It kind of made her sad, like her cherished memories were being stripped of their innocence, put into a real-world perspective. But there was truth there, too. After all, Nanoha-mama and Fate-mama were, at their core, _heroines_, while the Wolkenritter were _soldiers_, and while Vivio herself had a few soft-and-fluffy innocent patches still, she knew she was in the latter group rather than the former.

"Yaris, you're Takamachi's escort. Your job is to engage any opposition you'll encounter and keep them from hindering her progress."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I'll settle the rest of the deployment questions once we see the enemy's force distribution," Signum finished.

Vivio was a little surprised at first that Zafira hadn't been the one assigned to escort her, but after a moment's thought she understood. Zafira was a powerful fighter but his skills weren't best suited to an escort run involving sniping people out of the way. Likewise, the personal tie made working together problematic, not so much for Zafira as for Vivio—could she be trusted to press on if she saw Zafira ambushed or hurt?

The helicopter came to a stop some distance outside the target area, hovering in place, and a howling rush of air filled the cabin as Signum opened the door. The Sword Team members deployed, the six members of the strike unit in tight formation while the dozen support mages fanned out to take up an encircling position. All descended to street level nearly at once, in case the kidnappers kept lookouts or cameras checking against an aerial assault. Just flying up to the Steel Room and dropping in without camouflaging magic would be like shouting, "Hey, kill the hostages!"

The strike team touched down, together with the leader of the support unit. In Valkyrie Mode, Vivio felt faintly ridiculous next to the rest of them. She needed her wings to fly, but she couldn't help but think that they looked showy and overdone next to everyone else's Barrier Jacket.

_Get a grip, Vivio!_ she told herself. _You've got more important things to worry about than first-day-on-the-job jitters!_ She was acting her age, she thought, in entirely the wrong sense of the word.

"Takamachi," Signum said, a hint of chiding in her voice.

"Yes, ma'am! _Seelen Fenster!_"

The scrying window opened up in front of her, blanketing the cold, stern image of the former industrial plant from her view. Her magical senses plunged on, roving through the area. While Yuuno had taught her to scry for various things, this time it was people she was trying to sense. Bright white lights lit up in the pale blue fog of her window as she located them, one after another.

"There. I'm sensing fourteen people in all, nine magically active, at least three strongly."

"Can you clarify?"

"Um...A rank or better, Colonel. I can't get more specific than that."

"What about the hostages? Are they there?"

"I think so, ma'am. This one here," she said while pointing to a light, "is reading like it's two people in the same physical space, so that's what a woman with a late-term pregnancy would show." She flinched as she realized something else. "Signum, one of them's magically active and the other isn't."

"Takamachi, I already said that we won't use a dimensional-shift barrier," Signum bit off. Vivio wondered if it was because of the slip with her name or the fact that Vivio had felt it necessary to remind her that they couldn't do something that they weren't going to do anyway.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Still, I'm glad for the information." She laid a hand on Vivio's shoulder. "It's important to know what tactical options are available."

Vivio smiled, relieved.

"Thank you, ma'am!"

"Can you plot those locations to the building plan?"

"I'll try. Parsifal, access 'Steel Room' architectural schematics and synchronize with _Seelen Fenster_ results."

_**"Ja, Meister."**_

An ordinary screen opened, displaying the 3D blueprints of the building from the city planning office. Vivio watched as her device processed what her scrying spell was showing about the location of the people inside and compared it to the scale of the plan, placing lights to indicate their locations.

_**"Synchronization Complett."**_

"Please mark the hostages."

The two they suspected were Elaine and Billy turned green.

"Transmit to the other team members," she instructed. "The plan version won't update any movements by the people inside, though."

"At least it's accurate as of the time it was made," Yaris joked. "That's better than most intel we get!"

Vivio closed out the scrying spell.

"Is there anything else, Colonel?"

"No. Agito, unison with me."

"All right!" chirped the red-haired device. "Let's kick some ass, boss!" Vivio watched, fascinated, as the tiny Unison Device literally merged her body with Signum's, as if she were being absorbed into a Wolkenritter. The tone of Signum's hair paled to a strawberry blonde and four short wings of flame sprouted from her back. By combining in that way, it allowed them to use power greater than either one could manage alone. Vivio understood the principle well since her own Overdrive Device Mode basically created an artificial unison effect within herself using her uniquely engineered genetic structure.

"Strike team, deploy!" Signum snapped, and the six of them took off. Vivio, with Yaris on her heels, angled for the back door which offered the closest access to the basement where the McLarens were located, while the others went towards the front or the upper levels as Signum directed.

"Support team, raise barrier now!"

As one, they crashed into the Steel Room.

~X X X~

Solstice looked worried on the link screen, Sonoma thought. That was a problem with the young. They wore their passion on the outside, where everyone could see it, and when things went wrong, that emotion turned too easily to fear. They hadn't yet learned to internalize their feelings, pull that passion inside, and use it as a core of strength while at the same time protecting it from shocks and fear with a wall of logic, control.

"I just received a transmission from Jarentil. The Enforcers caught Celica! They've figured out that he arranged for the Nest to be shipped out of Tiburon."

Sonoma nodded.

"I see." That had always been a risk. The intermediaries Pacer had set up, Javelin and the Aldorous Enclave, were red herrings to distract any investigation. An ordinary black-market deal, ambitious local criminals getting together with a larger group. But if they pried sufficiently far, they'd of course find Celica out.

"Thankfully," he continued, "it doesn't matter."

"Doesn't _matter_?" Solstice exclaimed. "He can tell them—"

Sonoma smiled faintly.

"Yes? What _can_ he tell?"

"He's one of us, Sonoma!"

"And he is aware that the Nest was procured _for_ us. Not where it was sent or for what. Only those of us involved in the actual execution of the plan know what it is. There's nothing that he can tell them that would give us away."

"But even so..."

Sonoma sighed. She was such a child. Younger, even, than he was when he'd been set onto this path by the government troops.

"Solstice, calm down. Even if by some devil's trick everything fell into their hands it wouldn't matter. Things are too far along for even the vaunted Enforcers to stop."

She took a deep breath.

"I wish I could share your conf—"

Suddenly, the screen went black, cutting her off in mid-word. _What the—?_ Sonoma checked his own equipment; his access to the communications network wasn't compromised, but he couldn't reestablish contact with Solstice. The problem was on her end. The only question was, how much of a problem was it?

Sonoma knew the answer to that. Enough of a problem for him to take the link device he'd been talking to her on and slag its insides to dust with a minor spell, then toss the debris down the nearest sewer grate just in case someone intended to attempt a trace from the other end.

Fortunately, he thought, he'd been telling Solstice the truth.

There wasn't enough time left for the TSAB to stop them.


	20. Chapter XIX

When Signum hit the skylight, it exploded apart, as if in that one instant the glass and metal alike had actually bent away until they shattered to keep from touching her. The shower of glass fragments glittered in the flame of her unison-fire wings as she descended into the central room of the club. They were oddly fanciful thoughts for her to be having, poetic ways of noticing things that were alien to the lead Wolkenritter's usually stolid, no-nonsense persona.

Then again, unisoning with Agito always filled her with a feeling of nostalgia. They were both relics in their own ways, artifacts of the magical technology of a lost empire, a time still studied and analyzed but when all was said and done a time that had passed by, never to return. They were two of a kind in that respect, and when they joined it was somehow...less lonely.

These thoughts flickered through Signum's mind in an instant, never quite disturbing her consciousness, just a brush against the back of her mind. Her active thoughts were noting the presence of four people in the room, as Vivio's scrying had revealed. Laevatein was out and in her hand as she descended towards them.

"This is the Time-Space Administrative Bureau. All present will submit to our custody. Those who surrender and are subsequently arrested will have the right to trial," her voice rang out.

Few criminals ever took them up on the offer. Testarossa had once told her that the major benefit of the resisting-arrest-means-no-right-to-defense policy was that it drastically cut down on the number of _innocent_ people who tried to run away.

The habitues of the Steel Room didn't surrender. Their responses were more along the lines of "Damn it, the Bureau!" and "Get the bastards!" In the next instant shooting magic was blasting up towards herself and her wingman, Captain Mustang. One of the four ran towards the side of the room while two were firing on the invaders. The fourth looked to be the most dangerous, though, since he immediately sprang into the air to confront Signum, a Barrier Jacket forming around him while he spun a playing-card-sized plaque out into a double-bitted axe. He was around twenty, with a mint-green ponytail and abstract tattoos on both cheeks like barbed wire or thorn-crusted vines.

Thorn-face's axe crashed against Laevatein as the two Belkan-style fighters met in midair. Signum felt the impact jar up through her arm; she generally parried the _first_ attack in close combat directly instead of dodging or deflecting the blow, as a way of gauging her enemy's power.

"That's right," he laughed. "C'mon and get some more of this, why don't you?"

Among this group of criminals, Thorn-face's level of ability probably made him stand out; he was clearly one of the stronger talents that Vivio had pinpointed. But that wasn't enough for him to give Signum any kind of run for her money. Still, she was too experienced to think that "strength" alone was what settled a battle. That kind of immature thinking got fighters killed when a weaker opponent suddenly produced a surprising tactic or other unexpected challenge.

He spun away from her, then came back in with a series of cleaving strikes. Signum didn't try to block them directly, instead using Laevatein against the flat or the haft of the axe to turn it aside when she didn't just dodge outright. Peripherally, she was aware of Mustang engaging fire with the Mid-style enemies while the fourth opponent was rummaging behind the DJ's station.

"Damn, you're strong!" Thorn-face said. "That's just how I like 'em. That's why Skyfell, here, is an axe, to cut your kind down to size!"

The axehead rose up its shaft, spun through a hundred and eighty degrees, and locked back down in place, spitting out the spent casing from the cartridge it had just loaded.

"That's the stuff! Burst Rage!"

Skyfell's head lit up with a dark purple glow, and Thorn-face dove in again, swinging fiercely for Signum's head. At the same time the fourth target popped up from behind the DJ's station, carrying a rifle-shaped weapon of some kind, possibly a military-grade ANT or perhaps some kind of illegal mass weapon.

Signum had no intention of finding out.

_**"Schlangenform."**_

With a flick of her wrist, Laevatein shifted to Snake Form, its sword-blade separating into segments connected by a cable. The whiplike coils lashed out, snapping back and forth across Thorn-face's path, making him break off his charge. Meanwhile, the tip of the whip slashed across the floor, gouging a slice through the polished black surface, and snapped upwards to sever the enemy's weapon.

Signum snapped her wrist again, retracting the coils. She was already in motion towards Thorn-face when the blade clicked back into place.

_**"Schwertform."**_

Brass spat from the eject port at the back of Laevatein's blade above the hilt. The sword burst into sudden flame and she struck at the off-balance Thorn-face. Desperately, he brought Skyfell around to try and parry the blow.

Which was doubly convenient for Signum, since Skyfell was what she was aiming for.

Laevatein's blade, boosted by the added power of the cartridge and Signum's unison with Agito, bit into the axe-haft two inches below the head. The squeal of metal tearing through metal filled her ears, and the shaft parted into two pieces, sparks spraying from the cut. The head plummeted towards the floor below, hitting the tile with a dull clanking sound. Thorn-face looked up at her with wide eyes, shock and terror wiping away his smug confidence.

"Let's finish this, Agito."

"Damn straight. Little punk, kidnapping kids!"

Signum dove straight down, headfirst, at the stunned mage, her sharp battle cry putting him even more on edge. Even without his device, he flung up a shield spell, but after a couple of seconds it shattered under Laevatein's blade. Flame suddenly boiled up, bursting around him in a series of explosions, stripping away his Barrier Jacket and blasting him unconscious. She could have killed him easily enough with real fire, but instead used pseudo-elemental magic damage like a Mid-user would.

It didn't really feel right. Centuries of training told Signum that battle, whether an honorable confrontation with worthy enemies or a purging of criminal scum, should be to the death. A knight, though, conducted herself as a loyal servant of her liege's goals, rather than substituting her own ego. There was no hesitation is seizing Thorn-face's shirt front and bringing him safely to the floor.

Mustang had already felled one of the Mid-style mages by this point as well as taking down the null Signum had disarmed. The last enemy was fully on the defensive now, trying desperately to hold on to a Protection barrier against Mustang's steady battering. The outcome was not in doubt, but Signum snapped out Laevatein's Snake Form again, destroying the barrier so Mustang's next blast took down the enemy.

"Sword-1 to strike team. One strong target, two weak targets, one inactive target down. Continuing sweep," she announced.

When innocent lives were at stake, speed was essential.

~X X X~

Waringham Versa swung his device up, its barrier reinforcement knocking aside the ball-and-chain of the Belkan fighter attacking him. He'd been like her once, a TSAB cadet, lapping up their lessons in magic school, looking to be a big, shiny hero saving the worlds from rogue mages and dimensional criminals. He'd been a boy, then, a child really. It wasn't until he'd entered into late adolescence, then later his university years, that it had started to sink home. The corruption, the tyranny perpetrated by the TSAB in the name of "peace" and "justice" had sickened him. He'd vowed to fight it however he could. He was a reservist by that point despite his combat skills, and that's when Jennifer Solstice had found him, had shown him a way to strike back, strike _hard_ at the oppressors.

He'd never noticed the irony of it, that he'd found out how "repressive" and "totalitarian" the "TSAB Thought Police" was because of studying in books that any person was perfectly free to purchase. People willing to give their life for a cause—preferably while _taking_ as many lives as possible-were generally bad at irony.

The soldier of the oppression he was fighting was pretty good; she wielded her weapon with skill as well as power—but Versa knew he was better. Just because he used Mid-style didn't mean that he couldn't be expert at close fighting.

"Spark Shower!"

A blast of electricity sprayed from the tip of his staff directly into the woman's face. Her Barrier Jacket protected her from serious injury, but it stung and distracted her, letting Versa step up the attack, striking at her throat, then her elbow, the latter blow resulting in a sharp crack of bone. Versa was about to tear the device from her hand when he was suddenly brought up short. Glowing white chains wrapped around him, pinning his arms to his sides and his legs together. He tried to summon up magic to break loose but nothing answered; it was a sealing bind.

"Finish this. We don't have time to play," a male voice growled from behind him.

"Yes, sir," the woman said, shifting her device's handle to her uninjured hand. She began to spin the ball furiously, brilliant blue light trailing in its wake until it looked like there was an azure wheel centered on her hand. "Rolling Thunder!"

She flicked her hand towards the bound man, the wheel leapt off the chain and cannoned into Versa, and he knew no more.

"Thank you, sir," Renault said, breathing heavily.

"Are you able to continue?" Zafira asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Very well. Sword-2 to strike team. One strong target, one weak target, one inactive target down. Proceeding."

~X X X~

"Hey, what the hell?" There was a single guard, a bouncer type by his muscular build, in the back hall Vivio crashed into. Taking Signum literally, she ignored him completely. She did drop to the floor and switch to Armor Mode, though, since the hallway was too narrow for her to fly without her wings scraping the wall.

"TSAB!" Yaris barked from behind her. "On the floor, now!"

The guard didn't drop. Instead, he cast a barrier spell, blocking off the corridor. Vivio almost ran into it, then slammed her fist into the defense while Yaris pumped several blasts into it one after the other. The guard wasn't a device user, and while one didn't _have_ to use a device to be a skilled mage—just ask Yuuno!—the odds were against it.

The third shot smashed down the barrier, and the fourth shot smashed down the guard. Vivio charged ahead down the corridor, then stopped at the door to the utility stairs opposite the manager's office, yanked it open, and started down, her boots echoing off the steps. Yaris floated after her, green dragonfly wings whirring at her feet from her Flier Fin variation.

The stairs opened into a basement, a wide-open, dim space with a low ceiling and utility pipes standing free. The area they wanted, where the two people most likely to be the McLarens were, was over on the far side. It shouldn't be any kind of secret room, at least not by the plans, so Vivio ran in that direction and sure enough noticed a door.

_**"Panzerschild."**_

Parsifal's autoguard caught Vivio by surprise; the woman who'd attacked had popped up from behind a couple of crates and fired two quick shots from an ANT. The shield stopped them cold, and Yaris shot back, felling the nonmagical foe easily enough. In the next instant, though, a charged blast detonated and a shower of shooting magic descended on the Sword Team mages. Their Barrier Jackets held off the attacks, but Vivio hesitated for a second as the two mages closed on them from opposite sides.

_Signum said to go directly to the hostages,_ she told herself. _That's what I have to do. _She ran for the door, leaving the job of counterattacking the enemies to Yaris. Chanted spells and the impact of blasts on shields echoed behind her.

The door was locked, Vivio discovered when she tried to turn the handle. _Of course it would be._ Worse, it was solid metal, perhaps part of the original industrial plant's design? Or added deliberately by the new ownership, whomever they were, for just this purpose?

"If that's the way you want it..." Vivio muttered. "You'll find out I'm not the Iron Hammer Knight's student for nothing! Load cartridge!" She laced her fingers together and raised her doubled fists over her head. _"Graf Eisen!"_

She slammed her fists into the metal door. The spell was weak against living beings; she'd designed it for precisely this purpose-smashing down inanimate targets like shield spells or armored walls. With a ringing crash, the door split in the middle and fell into the room. Vivio stepped inside, and there they were, chained to the wall. Though dirty and disheveled from their ordeal, it was definitely the McLarens.

"Don't worry!" Vivio cried. "I'm here to rescue you!"

A sudden blast of energy hit Vivio in the side, blasting her to the left so she crashed into the wall to a chorus of shrieks from the prisoners.

"Then who," a female voice sneered, "is going to rescue you?"

~X X X~

_A/N: You'll probably have noticed that both Skyfell's wielder and Lt. Renault, despite being Modern Belkan users, call their spell names in English. The key word there is "Modern"; in this case I'm following the example set by Subaru and Ginga (and Vivio herself in _ViVid_)-mostly to make it easier on me, of course!_


	21. Chapter XX

Vivio shook her head, pushing herself away from the wall. Taking a surprise shot like that had hurt—and it wasn't some weak attack like she and Yaris had hit so far. Concrete dust drifted off her shoulders, left over from the impact, surprising her.

_Lucky my Barrier Jacket's strong_, she thought. _But why didn't Parsifal autoguard?_

"You're the one that's going to need saving!" she snapped at the woman who'd attacked her, only to realize that she had no idea who was there.

_What the—?_

"Oh, really? Crystal Dagger!"

Shimmers formed in the air and before Vivio could realize what was happening, they launched themselves at her, pelting her with shooting magic. They pelted her once, twice, jolting her, but she gritted her teeth and absorbed the next two hits, focusing past the pain to conjure another spell.

_"Panzergeist!"_

The barrier manifested at once, shielding her against the remaining daggers, another dozen that sprayed at her from all directions, several that she couldn't even see until they struck. Even so, the barrier covered her completely, so it didn't matter if she couldn't tell where the attacks were coming from. Protected as she was, Vivio had a chance to think straight.

_Illusionist!_ she realized, _and a darned good one besides!_ Vivio was aware of illusion magic, but it was a real specialist who could not only keep herself invisible while attacking her enemies but also stealth-cloak the spells themselves, hiding them from Parsifal's senses and the naked eye as well. _So no autoguard—and the bad light in here makes it all the worse._

In the next second, a woman's image phased in on the far side of the room. She was in her early twenties, with long blonde hair and a Barrier Jacket that looked like a silver minidress glittering with sparkling crystals.

"Stupid TSAB lackey. Do you really think that you can do anything now?"

_"Panzerfaust!"_ was Vivio's response. The eloquence of the reply was spoiled, though, when the rainbow orb zipped _through_ the woman and blew a chunk out of the far wall.

_Yeah, like she'd just show herself,_ Vivio thought ruefully, but her realization of how she'd been tricked did her more harm than good as the time she spent metaphorically kicking herself left her a couple of seconds slow in realizing what the woman's next step would be.

"Diamond Burst—charge!"

There was nothing at first, but then a second later Vivio felt something jab the small of her back and another blast like the one she'd taken on first entering the room launched her flying. It was, apparently, some kind of delayed attack that only released in hand-to-hand combat after being charged up—which was a heck of a lot more nasty given that Vivio couldn't tell where the next attack was coming from.

_Fate-mama could probably figure out where she was by air currents in the room or something,_ Vivio thought ruefully. But wishing for close-combat martial-arts skills she didn't have wasn't going to help. She pushed herself up to her hands and knees, only to be blasted up into the air, crashing against a couple of pipes with enough force to buckle them. _I'm toast if I can't_ find _her, blast it! Maybe..._

"Crystal Dagger!"

_"Eisengeist!"_

Vivio's best guess as to why she didn't keep up with the Diamond Bursts was that they took too much magic-her opponent had to recover a bit while maintaining the illusions. That gave her a little time to think while holding off the weaker attacks—but even so, it didn't give her answers, only opportunities.

_Scrying magic?_ she thought desperately-fight camouflage and concealment with something that revealed truth? But her _Seelen Fenster_ and other static spells wouldn't let her fight back through them. _I could try—but that's for finding library books!_

It wasn't like she had much of a choice, though.

_"Wotanauge!"_

It hit her hard, a forceful jolt as the magic yanked her into a heightened state of perception. The world went black-and-white, light and shadow reversing themselves like a photographic negative from Earth. Vivio's eyes throbbed painfully; this spell wasn't meant to change her _entire_ perspective on the world, just to narrow down a specific item out of a group, separating the wheat from the chaff. She was going to have a monster headache when this was over.

_But it worked._

"Got you," she whispered, clenching a fist even as the woman prepared another Diamond Burst. The kidnapper attacked her, lunging with her wand-like device as if it was a dagger, but Vivio sidestepped, grabbed the woman's wrist, hauled her past to slam the wand-tip against the wall to set off the spell harmlessly, then swept her foot up to deliver a savage kick to the ribs for good measure.

"If I got beat by a one-trick pony like you, Vita-sensei would never forgive me!" Vivio snapped, levering the woman's arm out and around in a painful hold to expose her face, then punched her in the jaw. Unfortunately, the woman's Barrier Jacket kept Vivio's strike from putting her out and she desperately set off a shower of sparks in the teenager's face, making Vivio stumble away.

Vivio tried another _Panzerfaust_, but the scrying magic's strange effect on her vision was having a distracting effect; especially at a distance the lack of color made everything blend into each other and confused her perspective. The guided shots went wild, missing badly. The woman spun and crouched, ready for a counterattack, when Yaris suddenly burst into the room.

"Another TSAB fly steps into my web," the woman sneered mockingly—but the voice didn't come from her. Instead, it was off to Vivio's left, from the back corner of the room, where the McLarens were.

"More like a bug-spray delivery," Yaris snapped, raising her device in the direction the voice had come from.

_What's she doing?_ Vivio thought, then realized that there must be not just sound, but a visual illusion there.

"Yaris, no!"

"Spark Cannon!"

**"**_**Eisenschild**_**,"** Parsifal acted, firing off a cartridge. Not knowing the effect of Yaris's spell, Vivio called up her enhanced shield and covered the whole corner with it. It was a good thing, as a brilliant blue thunderbolt blasted into the shield.

"Takamachi, what the heck are you doing?"

_Illusionist!_ Vivio "shouted" heart-to-heart. _That's where the hostages are!_

"Crystal Dagger!"

"Mystic Defender!"

_"Eisengeist!"_

Vivio and Yaris's defensive spells took the hits without breaking and Vivio crossed the room to Yaris in a wobbling run.

"Parsifal, keep the hostages covered. Maintain that shield with everything you've got!"

_**"Ja, Meister."**_

_Yaris, can you shoot something big?_

_Sure, but shoot it where?_

_I'll guide you._ She grabbed Yaris's device above its owner's grip.

_You can see her?_

_Hey, I'm the scryer, right?_

The kidnapper raised her own wand, obviously preparing something, but Yaris was faster. Their enemy realized this and tried to dodge, but Vivio swung the staff to the right and Yaris let her do it, trusting her new teammate to do the aiming-and unlike Vivio, the shooting mage's aim didn't have to be all that precise.

_Now!_

"Atomic Burn!"

Light streaked in from points around the room, striking a spot on the floor about four feet from the enemy's shoes, then suddenly exploded outward in a blast hemisphere that blew the woman into the air and slammed her now very visible body down. Her Barrier Jacket was gone, replaced by street clothes, and even the woman's device had returned to its standby card form.

"Sword-5 to team," Yaris reported over the commlink. "Hostages located, one strong, one weak, and two null targets down." She started to secure the illusionist while Vivio let the _Wotanauge_ drop. Her head throbbed like a triphammer, but returning to normal perception helped.

_Maybe Uncle Yuuno could help me refine that spell properly for field use_, she thought. _It could be a big help if I could see through magical traps and illusions freely, and practice could help me deal with the perception issues._

She went over to the corner and dropped her shield spell to reveal mother and son chained to the walls, their faces grimy and tear-streaked.

"Don't worry," Vivio said as gently as she could. "We've come to get you out of here."

She knelt down between them and tested the strength of the chains. They were solid enough, but apparently nonmagical.

"This'll just take a second," she told Mrs. McLaren, and slammed her fist into the link where the chain connected to the wall staple. The magically-enhanced punch of her standard Belkan combat technique did its job; the staple broke and the chain dangled free.

"Your...Your Majesty..." Mrs. McLaren breathed, her eyes widening.

"Mom?" the boy spoke up.

"It's...it's her, Billy. She answered our prayers!"

Vivio winced inwardly at the comment, but kept the smile on her face. If anyone had earned the right to have their faith indulged, it was these two.

"Thank you, Your Majesty!" Billy said, awed. "Mom said that you would help us, but I didn't think you'd come here for real!"

"Well, it just sort of happened that way," she muttered, embarrassed. "Now, hold still; I have to get you and your mom out of here. There's still other bad guys around that my friends are fighting."

"Uh-huh!"

Vivio smashed the boy free and helped the two hostages to their feet. They stood, weak and wobbly.

"Now, you two stay behind me, okay?"

"Yes, Your Majesty," they chorused, showing the advantage of being able to offer "divine" guidance to upset civilians. If it could help keep these people calm and help her get them to safety, then being the Sankt Kaiser didn't completely suck.

"Yaris?" She looked back over her shoulder at the lieutenant.

"I've got your back—_Your Majesty_," Yaris added the last bit with a grin.

_Don't you start!_

_Suck it up, rookie,_ Yaris teased back, making Vivio grin. Some friendly grief for the newbie was what she'd been hoping the other team members would give her, honestly. It was the unwanted outsiders who _didn't_ get ragged on in a group like this.

Vivio led the McLarens out of the back room, then through the main basement area where Yaris had dealt with the ambushers, and up the stairs. She paused at the top of the staircase and looked back and forth, making sure that another group of attackers wasn't about to jump on them, but it looked clear-not all that surprising, given the reports that had come in from Signum and Zafira's groups, who were rapidly thinning out the enemy strength. They left the nightclub, and Yaris turned and headed back in to help up with the roundup.

"Sword-6 to Sword-1," Vivio reported. "I'm clear of the building with the hostages. Both are alive and apparently well."

"Good work," Signum responded crisply. "Support team leader, signal for medical and prisoner transport to move in. We'll want to get the McLarens back to headquarters as soon as possible."

They'd done their part, Vivio thought, in rescuing the McLaren family. Now they'd find out if the systems engineer was really just the innocent victim he'd seemed like, or if he'd try to protect himself instead of giving them a full confession of everything that had happened. Vivio was betting on the former, and she only hoped that whatever he'd been forced to do by the kidnappers, it wasn't so bad that he'd end up having his life ruined by the criminal charges that would follow.

~X X X~

"...only then, Sonoma told me that he wasn't going to let my family go!" McLaren said.

His confession hadn't just been freely given, Fate thought; it had positively come gushing out of him. He didn't just _want_ to tell the truth; on some level he _needed_ to. The reunion with his wife and son had been as tearful and heartfelt as anything Fate could imagine, with praise for Vivio taking up a good one-fourth of both sides of the conversation. Struggling through hardship could be a very faith-affirming experience, but it wasn't usually so literal a thing as for the McLarens!

"Did she really do as well as they're saying?" Fate had asked Signum while they'd watched the reunion from the observation room.

"She was adequate. I'll be reviewing the entire team's performance with them in due course, but for her first genuine combat mission, without the time to be integrated into the team, she did well. She obeyed orders, did not let herself be distracted from her assigned task, and accomplished the goals I'd set her." For Signum, who always confined herself to the unadorned truth when talking about a mission, that was positively effusive. Fate had smiled at it, which Signum had noticed at once.

"Feeling the proud mother, Testarossa?" she'd said with a chuckle.

"It's nice to see my youngest growing up right."

"You're still young. Now that you're on-planet full-time and Vivio is taking her first post as an adult, do you and Nanoha plan on having any children of your own?"

"Wh-what?"

"She said, are you planning on having kids?" Agito had repeated for her partner. "Geez, is this a lightning mage thing? Does all the thunder damage your hearing or something?"

"N-no, we haven't discussed anything like that," she'd said, blushing pink in embarrassment. But seeing the McLarens, with one child eagerly chattering about how he'd been rescued and another on the way, Fate couldn't help but wonder if there might really be something to Signum's not-quite-a-joke.

Now, though, as she listened to McLaren's confession, those personal thoughts had been set aside, her mind completely focused on the details of what had been said and done.

"As insurance against you continuing to keep quiet about what you'd done?" Fate asked, that being by far the most likely reason why the kidnappers wouldn't free-or just kill-their victims.

"Yes, exactly. He knew that the code would only be valid until it was changed in the next routine update nine days from now."

"The code? What code?"

"That's what Sonoma wanted, what his program did. It extracted the master operations access code from the network core."

Fate didn't know what a master operations access code was, but by its name it didn't sound like anything they wanted anywhere near Sonoma.

"What does having that code let him do?"

"Anything."

She blinked.

"Define anything."

"Complete control over the network core's functions. Free access to any programs or systems that are run out of the core, extracting or changing data...that's why it's an administrative-level access code. General Yagami gets it as head of the CCDF; the other people who have it are the General Secretary of the TSAB Council and the Chairman of the Armed Services Combined Staff Command."

Fate pinched the bridge of her nose.

"And you just gave this to Sonoma?"

"There's backups and redundancies everywhere. Even if he somehow managed to do a total wipe of the system functions for whatever reason, we could have it all restored in under a week's round-the-clock work. Yes, he could help himself to whatever data he wanted, but—"

"How long to change the master code?"

"Half an hour to go through the initial routine, and then another five to ten hours to properly export it to the peripheral systems and subnets, depending on the traffic level."

Fate nodded.

"Bardiche, please connect me to Long Arch-1."

**"Yes, sir."**

Hayate's face popped up on screen at once.

"Fate, what's wrong?"

"It looks like some kind of espionage." She filled Hayate in on the details, which her friend understood better than she did.

"I see. Rein, have the Data Engineering Section begin the process of changing the access code now. With luck we can get it changed before they actually do anything with it. Their second task will be to search for any trace that it already did get used, but let's take it in that order. There's no point in looking to see if anything's missing while the door's still standing open for anyone to walk in."

"Yes, Mistress," Rein's voice chirped from off-screen.

"I...I just want to say how sorry I am for causing all of this, General Yagami," McLaren spoke up suddenly.

"You didn't cause it," Hayate corrected him. "But you didn't trust us. If you'd come to me when the kidnapping first happened, then we could have done exactly what we did do, without having to turn over sensitive data to our enemies. Your family is very lucky that Commodore Harlaown is as good an investigator as she is."

He sighed heavily.

"I know, General. I'll plead guilty to whatever charges are pressed."

"Better wait to hear them before you say that. Thanks for alerting me, Commodore. Let me know if anything else comes up."

The screen shut down and Fate turned back to McLaren. The idea of him facing charges disturbed her; she understood what it was to do the wrong thing for the sake of a family she loved. On the other hand, the captain wasn't an abused child but a responsible adult who should have had a clearer perspective.

Even so, she wished it could have a different ending.

~X X X~

"We have the report on the seventeen prisoners captured by the Sword Team," Gallardo informed Hayate. The General was very proud of her people; they'd pulled off their first mission to perfection: hostages rescued safely, all enemies captured, no serious injuries to the team. Her 'kids' had definitely put a smile on her face.

"That was fast."

He shrugged.

"Most of them had ordinary citizen records. University students with a history of ties to radical politics."

"All idealistic passion and very little rational thought," Hayate commented. "It's fertile recruiting ground for extremist groups."

"That's right, and we found out which one. There were quite a few who didn't keep to the 'code of silence' under interrogation. Some even started bragging, and the birthplace of the apparent leader, a Jacquelyn Solstice—who _isn't_ talking—tends to confirm it. What I wanted to bring to you directly, though, was the report that came up when we did a standard run on recent activities for the group. Please take a look."

He opened a screen for her, and Hayate's eyebrows rose in surprise. _Small world_, she thought. A second later, she stopped thinking about the weird coincidence and started putting the pieces together. A phrase that had been lurking in the back of her mind since Marshal Sebring had first offered her this position sprang up.

"_When the Night Sky shall reign o'er Asgard..."_ she whispered.

"General?"

Hayate shot out of her seat and slammed her palms on the desk.

"Long Arch-1 to Long Arch Control," she activated communications, linking her to the CCDF's command deck.

"General!" the bridge officer snapped to attention at once.

"Lt. Colonel Kia, verify my identity and whereabouts." She spat out her personal code. Obviously confused but trained to follow orders, he quickly checked her details and the code phrase. "Verified as General Yagami Hayate, ma'am."

"Good. Effective immediately, institute Condition Nightfall. I'll have specific orders in a couple of minutes and I want everything ready when I do. Contact me the instant all notifications are complete and acknowledged, or if anyone tries to object."

"Y-yes, ma'am," Kia stammered, paling, as well he should. Nightfall was the code for a declaration of emergency martial law, putting all military and police forces within Cranagan's district under CCDF, and hence Hayate's, direct command.

"My God, General, what does—" Gallardo began, but Hayate cut him off.

"Set up a briefing for me for..." She glanced at the clock. "Two-thirty, with Commodore Harlaown, Colonel Signum, the acting senior of Data Engineering Section-no, get Caravelle out of bed and down here...and I'll tell Nanoha and Vita myself. Find me any other mage who's ranked AAA or above and have them ready to scramble, too, if I didn't just list everyone in the district."

"Yes, ma'am, but-if I may ask, what's _happened_?"

"Your like crime, Gallardo. I've got a really bad feeling that I know what that Nest Fate's been chasing is supposed to do."

~X X X~

_A/N: Vivio really shouldn't be able to think up the "photographic negative from Earth" line, since even to the extent she might be familiar with Earth technology from the occasional visit to Nanoha's family and Lindy she'd be unlikely to encounter non-digital photography unless someone is a camera buff. But the metaphor works so well for what she's seeing, I used it anyway._

_Further bonus points are due to any reader who knows where Yaris's spell list comes from. As a clue, the rest of her attack magics are called: Napalm Shot, Thunder Blow, Plasma Shock, Lightning Bomb, and Plasma Rain._


	22. Chapter XXI

"Yesterday," Hayate declared, "a terrorist group used kidnapping to get their hands on the master operations code for our network core. Frankly, I think this is just a means to an end, to facilitate something a lot worse."

It was a decent opener, as such things went. What it lacked in punchy style was made up for by the fact that martial law was in effect and that four of the seven members of her audience had been hauled out of bed to be there. Nanoha, Vita, and Signum were all alert and uncomplaining, despite the third not only having just been awakened but just coming off a combat mission. Only Caravelle, the head of the Data Engineering Section, was showing her sleepiness, but she was still military; her hands were wrapped around a cup of strong, bitter coffee and she wasn't arguing that her night-shift subordinate ought to be there instead.

"Earlier this evening, thanks to Fate-chan's investigative work"—she wasn't bothering with formal titles—"we located the terrorists' base of operations. The Sword Team staged an assault, rescued the kidnap victims, and captured seventeen of the group."

"Hey, nice work!" Vita said and clapped Signum on the shoulder. "Wish I could have gone along."

"Is that why Vivio didn't come home tonight?" Nanoha asked. "A field mission already?"

"She's fine," Signum told her, "and did fine as well."

Nanoha and Vita both beamed and chorused, "That's my girl." Signum just sighed and focused on what Hayate was telling them.

"During the follow-up, we identified the group as a local cell of the Jarentil Liberation Front." A faint gasp came from off to Hayate's left and she nodded. "That's right, Fate-chan, the same world that your last case was set on. Gallardo-kun, some background?"

He blinked in surprise, probably at the "-kun" she'd assigned him, then recovered himself and cleared his throat.

"The Jarentil Liberation Front came out of the Jarentian civil war of twenty-one years ago," he explained. "Jarentil became known to the TSAB thirty-eight years ago, but was hampered in interdimensional trade and politics due to their lack of a unified world government. The blunt truth is, while _we_ might be willing to cope with the concept of a number of local nation-states, having a variety of local regimes with differing cultures, customs, and statutory schemes, it's a major handicap in terms of trade and cross-world political influence, where off-world interests are fundamentally concerned with exploiting the aspects of a planet which benefit _them, _while ignoring the rest. In response, there was a major push towards unification from the political progressives who sought the benefits of membership in terms of trade and technology. They formed a coalition of sorts with one wing of the conservatives, who concluded that since Jarentil possessed dimension-traveling technology the TSAB _would_ be regularly interacting with its affairs then gaining membership and a voice in Bureau government was a vital goal. They were opposed by the isolationists, who didn't want to interact with other worlds; the radical progressives, who saw world government-to say nothing of cross-dimensional administration-as tyranny; and a variety of nationalists, who saw world government as a threat to racial and cultural identity."

"All in all, a fairly standard split," Hayate concluded.

"The movement for unification gained enough steam that a push to form a world government began formally. After a couple of abortive attempts, a diplomatic council came up with the plan for what is now the Federation of Jarentian States. A global vote was held, with seventy-two percent in favor. We provided election oversight, since we weren't interested in getting a member world that was subject to an unwanted minority government that could fall apart in an instant."

Gallardo sighed.

"Most of the losing population accepted defeat gracefully, as the will of the people. Some did not, particularly in a three-nation region near the equator. Violent conflict was the result, those three nations against the world at large. The traditional military aspect ended soon, within three weeks, but a stubborn urban guerilla resistance was maintained for over a year before victory was achieved. The Jarentil Liberation Front grew out of the same sentiments as resisted unification, but seasoned with a healthy dose of revenge."

"For families and fellow citizens who died in the war?" Nanoha asked.

"Yes, but more than that; as you might expect, there were a number of incidents where innocent people were injured by fighters on both sides, by guerillas more interested in making a public statement than pinpointing targets, and by government troops stretched thin by ambushes and who'd often come to regard all the locals, not just resistance fighters, as their enemies. And of course there's plenty of hate for the TSAB because we're the root cause of everything, the reason why the government they're fighting against even exists."

"Morons," Vita summed it up.

"I don't see why that made you declare martial law, Hayate," Fate asked.

"As soon as the Front was identified, Gallardo-kun pulled the records on recent incidents involving them. It turns out that they were behind your case too, Fate."

"What?"

Hayate nodded.

"Tia and her partner found out that Timothy Celica, one of Tiburon's vice presidents, was actually a Front sleeper. He'd arranged for the diversion of the N4 ACC specifically to be transported to another cell. Their report suggests that Celica didn't know which one or what for; the delivery arrangements were made for him except for the part involving local criminals."

"That's actually reasonable. Terrorist cells rarely share information laterally, so no cell can betray another," Fate contributed.

"Tia did manage to give us the name or alias of the person who Celica was reporting to, though: Wilton Sonoma."

"Sonoma? That's the name the kidnappers used when talking to McLaren!" Fate exclaimed.

"That follows, doesn't it?" Hayate murmured.

"According to the Enforcement Bureau," Rein piped up, "the name 'Wilton Sonoma' is either that of a senior Jarentil Liberation Front operative or a kind of code-word alias used by a variety of terrorists depending on the situation. The profilers believe that it's 73.2-percent likely that Sonoma is a single person, male, aged between thirty-five and fifty, with magical talents in the AA+ range emphasizing in close combat, fire elemental, transformation, and movement magic."

"Additional support to the idea that Sonoma is an individual now operating on Mid comes from three weeks ago, when an individual giving that alias attempted to infiltrate the weapon development lab at the Arraven Naval Air Station. A petty officer was killed, but apparently managed to prevent Sonoma from accessing anything more sensitive than standard fleet maneuvers scheduling data."

"Excuse me, Mistress," Signum spoke up, "but given the potential our network has been compromised, is there any chance that some or all of this data might have been falsified to mislead us?"

"Nope!" Rein said. "This information comes directly from the Bureau's main records archive."

"Although," Gallardo allowed, "if the Front used the stolen access code to implant a relay program, they might know that we know."

"What about data tampering in transit?"

"Unlikely," Caravelle contributed. "The master operations code would let the terrorists upload a program that might block access or alter data, but the _results_ of such tampering would likely be evident to most end users or even the variety of interfaces we use." She pursed her lips while fishing for an analogy for the laymen, then came up with, "It's like if a burglar has a master key to your house. He can get in and out and the alarm won't go off, but you'll still notice if your jewelry is missing or he's left beer cans all over the living room."

"Was this Sonoma one of the people you arrested, Signum-san?" Nanoha wanted to know.

"Not if the description provided by the Enforcers is correct. The strongest enemy mage was an A+ illusionist whom Vivio and Lt. Yaris defeated."

"So either the Sonoma that McLaren met with is a different person, or he was coincidentally away from the hideout, or he was _intentionally_ away," Fate concluded. "I'd say it's the third; babysitting the hostages is a flunky's job. Oh, and Eileen McLaren testified that it was the illusionist who did the actual kidnapping, so you'll have additional charges there."

Hayate rapped her knuckles on the podium.

"I'm sorry, everyone, but we can work out the peripheral issues later. What I'm concerned about is the fact that the Nest diverted from Tiburon is very likely in Cranagan right now. It needs to be located, captured, or destroyed sooner rather than later."

"Why?" Nanoha wanted to know. Hayate knew her old friend well enough that she knew it wasn't a challenge, just a request for mission details.

"Rein, if you'll give us the relevant details, it'll let everyone know what they're up against and lead in to my explanation of why."

"Yes, Mistress." Rein called up a number of holoscreens which displayed the N4 in a variety of views and cutaways. "The Tiburon Heavy Industries N4 Armored Command Carrier, code-named 'Nest.' It was developed under a TSAB-authorized military contract for the Ground Forces as a field command vehicle, its purpose to provide maximum protection to its occupants while affording them a full range of communications and analysis to connect with field troops as well as surveillance and monitoring sources. In essence, it provides a unit commander with a mobile command post, permitting direct, personal access to the realities of the situation on the ground as well as the data and perspective benefits of a remote command site. It was particularly planned for the use of non-mage officers responsible for magically-active forces, who are often at a disadvantage in finding the best use of their mage troops."

Hayate wasn't sure if the operational benefits from the Nest actually justified its cost, or even its existence, but that was the problem with new military technology. Unless it simply didn't function at all, you could never be completely certain if it would work or not until the shooting started-and sometimes even then, tactical or strategic paradigms had to change too, like in the use of air power on Earth.

The thought had occurred to her while Rein summed up the technical details of the Nest, its gross tonnage, horsepower, top speed, and so on.

"Its weaponry is secondary," the Unison Device got to something more important, "consisting of four antipersonnel flame cannon mounted in turrets on the vehicle corners, and one heavier forward-firing weapon. This weaponry is basically defensive in nature and does not include homing-projectile capability. It's in protection where the Nest specializes."

"I can certainly agree with keeping the commander safe," Hayate said with a grin, lightening the mood.

"The primary defense, and the reason for the elemental rather than magic-damage weapons, is that the Nest can project a short-range anti-magic field effect, to about a thirty-foot radius. Using a variant of Jail Scaglietti's AMF technology, this has the effect of dispersing outright any magical attacks under a certain level of power, and drastically weakening anything above that level. Essentially, any magical attack of A rank or less won't even reach the Nest to engage its next level of defenses. Casting magic within the field is similarly restricted, but you're all familiar with how AMF conditions affect magic use from your previous experience-well, except for Lt. Colonel Caravelle, ma'am."

The computer specialist smiled, not without irony.

"Don't worry, Sergeant Major. I know that I'm here for different reasons than the rest of these worthies are. Go on."

"Yes, ma'am. Those attacks that breach the AMF are confronted with layered shield-type and barrier-type defenses, capable of stopping the majority of attacks that get through. Beneath that is physical armor, up to six-inch composite steel plate, depending on location. That isn't particularly effective against magical attacks, of course, but as part of a layered defense it does matter."

"The testing simulations prepared by Tiburon during the approval phase suggest that a steady assault by a squad of AA-ranked mages would overcome the barriers within twenty minutes, presuming that nothing fought back against them. Mass weapons of equivalent power would be even more effective since the AMF wouldn't have any influence on them," Gallardo contributed.

"What about magic that has a physical effect, like Belkan techniques?" Nanoha asked.

"In that case the effect was found to be the same as ordinary magic in eighty percent of simulations."

"Because the Belkan-users would have to move outside the AMF to charge their spells even though the effects are physical, and most physical-effect Mid-style spells are less efficient to cast than magic-damage spells, I suppose."

"That's right, Nanoha-chan," Hayate spared her magically-null aide from having to grapple with magical-battle tactical considerations.

"Che-" Vita interjected. "You guys keep talking about As and AAs. Everybody in this room's S or better except Rein. Well, and Nanoha while we're not allowing her to play with the big girls."

"Vita-chan!"

"That's exactly the point, Vita," Hayate told her. "About the only way to destroy the Nest quickly would be for an S-rank to unload on it with everything she had, or repeated strikes from a team of AAAs. Unfortunately, every AAA or higher-ranked mage in Cranagan is currently in this room." She smiled and added, "For some odd reason, TSAB policy is to deploy its highest-ranking Aces into the field where they can do as much good as possible. If this were the Bureau's central headquarters things would be different, but..."

This time it was Hayate who pulled up a screen, showing a city map.

"I'm assigning the four of you to these four points over the city." Four dots lit up. "That way, no matter where the Nest turns up, _someone_ can get to it in the minimum possible time, so that it can be promptly destroyed."

Signum and Vita would have left it at that. As soldiers, and as Hayate's guardian knights, the "whys" were only important to them if it affected their mission. Nanoha would have gone a little beyond that, but not with Hayate because she trusted her friend.

Fate was the investigator. She asked.

"Hayate, why is there this rush to destroy the Nest? Do you know what the Front is going to use it for?"

Hayate nodded.

"I think so. It's a communications vehicle and they've gone to considerable trouble to get their hands on our master operations access code. The two go together. if they just meant espionage, then they wouldn't need an armored vehicle to do it."

"Then what?"

She took a deep breath before quoting.

"'_When the Night Sky shall reign o'er Asgard, the Guardian shall turn his spear in rebellion to bring forth the Fall, save should the King's Mother be willing to bear the crimson brand._' Carim prophesied that the day before Marshal Sebring offered me this post."

"So you're the Night Sky, and Asgard is the mythical home of the gods," Fate said. "So unless it refers to a distant future when you're the General Secretary or TSAB Operations Director, the prophecy refers to now. But who's the Guardian? One of us?"

Hayate shook her head.

"Not the guardian of _me_, the guardian of 'Asgard.' Because in myth and legend, the one who stood watch at the bridge Bifrost, the only entrance to Asgard, was the god Heimdall."

"Heimdall!" Gallardo yelped, getting it faster than any of the others.

"The name we gave to a network of sixteen defensive satellites, originally conceived as a solution to the problem we encountered in the JS Incident when the Cradle rose and there were no fleet assets in range to destroy it. Each satellite is equipped with a low-yield dimension-distortion weapon—not Arc-en-Ciel grade, but quite capable of obliterating the Cradle in one shot-backed up with a standard naval battery for secondary fire. They're controlled by the CCDF directly; the firing lock is technically under my command. Caravelle, you'll verify what I'm afraid of?"

She nodded, tight-lipped.

"It's very possible that, using the master operations code, they could take control of a satellite, or even the whole network."

"So shut the computer off!" Vita said. "They can't hack it if it ain't on, right?"

"I've already initiated the procedures to change access codes and, in case of any blocks they may have embedded already, to shut the network down."

"So what's the problem?"

"System redundancies and protections," Caravelle answered. "The network core is the heart of the military subnet on Mid. It's not designed to be easily shut down. Even if you physically blow it up, core functions would automatically reroute to other systems across the planet. It's designed so that in the event of enemy attack, one lucky shot doesn't take out our entire computer network. To take it totally offline...I'd say it would take about ten hours of solid work."

"Your acting senior said twelve, so that's actually good news," Hayate said.

"He doesn't know all my tricks just yet," She paused, then added, "You're going to lose force coordination, you know," she warned Hayate. "Probably it's going to cost lives through unintended accidents as well."

Hayate nodded.

"I know, but...we _can't_ allow a holocaust. _One_ Heimdall shot could obliterate an area with a three-kilometer radius, and they are capable of repeated fire, together with steady bombardment from its secondary weapons. Imagine what that could do to a city."

"Could we destroy the Heimdall satellites in orbit?" Fate wondered.

"If need be, we'll have the Navy do just that," Hayate agreed, "though we'd prefer not to if we don't have to."

"Do they have to be within the city? The military subnet can be accessed from anywhere on Mid."

"But we can cut off remote communications access. Like when we were in high school and our cell phones were charged up, but were in a dead zone and couldn't call out? The Nest can operate as its _own_ communications hub, but only within its own limited data-transfer radius of five or six miles. The only place they could guarantee not being caught out would be within the city. If they're _not_ within city limits, we can just pull the plug without a full system shutdown; problem solved."

"Then we'd better get that search started now, right?" Vita said, hopping out of her seat.

"The first action the General took when Nightfall went into effect was to mobilize all police and military forces in the district to initiate a search," Gallardo said. "Unfortunately, scrying magic won't work to find it due to the AMF; as I understand it the problem is that a scrying spell can't locate a 'blank area' unless you are looking for something within the AMF effect that the scryer _knows_ is there but doesn't see. However, every possible unit has been brought into play."

"Yeah, Vita, don't sell our mistress short!" Rein announced.

"Signum, I want one of your Sword Team members escorting each of you in case the N4 is guarded by Front members. The S-rank's objective is to deal with the Nest, so the escort will fly cover."

"Very well. Lt. Renault is still a couple of days away from full recovery, so Captain Mustang will continue with me as we worked together well, Zafira with Vita, Vivio with Nanoha, and Lt. Yaris with Testarossa."

"Have the remaining members report to Long Arch for their search assignments; I'm going to the command deck now to assume direct control. Everyone else needs to be ready to scramble as soon as possible."

"Yes, ma'am!" There were salutes all around.

"Oh, I almost forgot," Hayate lied shamelessly, having deliberately saved it for last for the emotional impact. "Takamachi Nanoha: limiter release authorized with unrestricted effect." She watched as Nanoha rocked back on her heels for just an instant as the weight she'd learned, less than graciously, to live with every day was removed. A smile crept across her old friend's face as she felt the return of her full abilities.

The terrorists of the Jarentil Liberation Front had better prepare themselves for hell, because the White Devil was coming for them.


	23. Chapter XXII

Nanoha swept through the sky, twin pigtails trailing out behind her, the spear of Raising Heart's Exceed Mode in her hand. Vivio followed along as best she could, her steel wings outstretched. The sky wasn't her natural home the way it was her mother's, but for a straight shot from one point to another without fancy maneuvering she was able to keep pace in pure speed terms.

Vivio wondered why Signum had paired her up with Nanoha. Having Zafira accompany either Signum or Vita made perfect sense, as the Wolkenritter had operated together for hundreds of years. But to put Vivio with Nanoha—was there some tactical reason for it, or was it just pure sentiment? She'd known the Knight of the Sword long enough to be aware that Signum did have a sentimental side, something that most people outside her immediate circle wouldn't have believed possible.

Not having the full mission profile didn't help either. Vivio knew what the job was: fly to a specific point, wait there, then once the target was located accompany Nanoha there and keep her safe from counterattacks while she focused on destroying it. That she could do; bodyguard was probably her best kind of run given her skills.

_Nanoha-mama?_ she asked telepathically.

_Yes?_

_Can you tell me what's happening? All I know is that I was getting ready to go home to bed when the base went on full alert status, that Aunt Hayate had declared martial law, and than an hour later the four of us who were on the strike team on the rescue mission were told to scramble to escort the four of you._

There was silence for a moment.

_Do you need to know more?_

Even mentally, Vivio could recognize Nanoha's "teaching mom" voice.

_No_, she responded, _but I'd like to. Vita-sensei always says to learn all I can because the brass's idea of "need to know" isn't usually all that I'll actually need to know._

A chuckle bubbled up in Nanoha's mental "voice."

_That's Vita for you. Well, Hayate-chan didn't say to keep this secret, so..._

She summed up the story for Vivio as she'd heard it in the briefings. When she was through, the cold knot of fear in Vivio's belly reminded the teenager of just why someone had coined the phrase, "ignorance is bliss."

~X X X~

"I wouldn't have thought it would take so long for all of Cranagan's military and law enforcement resources to search the city for something as big as the Nest," Gallardo said. The main screen in the control center was taken up by a massive search map of the city, and the growth of green light representing cleared areas was agonizingly slow.

"They have to examine a location, including searching inside buildings, by eye, then properly chart the area searched so nothing gets missed, and report it in. All that to search the city at the heart of a dimension-spanning confederation," Hayate said grimly. "And while the command and control functions of the TSAB here are second in importance only to the Bureau HQ itself, in terms of sheer numbers there aren't _that_ many troops. There's a reason I even called out the cadets from the training program and academies." She glanced at the clock. "And meanwhile, we're still working on the computer system. If only we hadn't had to rescue the McLarens!"

"Ma'am?" Gallardo was surprised.

"I know we wouldn't have found out what they were up to without doing it. The problem is, our action against their base site is going to send a signal to Sonoma and the rest of the Front cell. If they're intelligent—and there's no reason to doubt it—they'll realize that _we_ now know at least some of what they've done. They'll know we'll take countermeasures at once."

"General Yagami," one of the Long Arch staff cut in on the discussion, "the commander of the 17th Infantry is reporting that some of his troops had to subdue resistance to be able to search a location and they're wondering what to do with the prisoners."

"Is there any apparent connection to the Jarentil Liberation Front?"

There was a pause while question and answer were relayed.

"No, ma'am. They apparently were ordinary criminals using a garage as a drug lab."

Hayate sighed. This was the fourth time so far someone had fought back for their own private reasons unrelated to the crisis.

"Rein, this is going to be a standing order, so get ready to disseminate it to all unit commanders." To the communications officer, she said, "Tell Major Venture to have his people scan their images and any ID, then leave them. We don't have the time or personnel to waste on prisoner pickup. If we get out of this, the police can round them up later."

"Yes, ma'am."

Rein zipped off to relay the order to the rest of the searchers.

"Where was I?" Hayate asked Gallardo.

"They'll know that we'll take countermeasures."

"Oh, yes. If I was in their position, then I'd strike at once before it was too late."

"Then isn't it good news that they haven't? Maybe the rescue mission captured key members of the group and they can't carry out their plan now."

"That would be nice, but I can't believe it. We haven't found Sonoma or the Nest, and most of those we caught are just rank-and-file hotheads. No, the longer this goes on without anything happening, the more convinced I am that they have a specific reason for waiting."

"But what could that be?"

"I don't know, Gallardo-kun," Hayate said ruefully, "but I'm certain that we won't like it when we do find out."

~X X X~

"Martial law," Daimler said, looking at the broadcast screen. "They know, right? I mean, that's gotta be about us."

Pacer leaned back in the command chair. He and Lancia, the computer operator, had only joined the others at one in the morning. They'd popped open the container doors, stepped into the back, and boarded the Nest, powering it up and initializing its systems, as well as familiarizing themselves with what they'd thus far only operated in sims.

"I'd expect it. You remember what Sonoma said when he contacted us."

"Yeah, but, this sounds like they're looking for us!"

"Then it's a good thing Solstice doesn't know our location, isn't it?" Like Sonoma, Pacer hadn't gotten as old as he had by neglecting the need-to-know principle.

"Shouldn't we call her? See what's going on?"

"Traceable," Lancia said. She was a painfully thin woman in an electric blue tank-top that matched her hair, and baggy cargo pants. Like Pacer she was from Jarentil, which was good. Sincere as they were, he wouldn't have trusted an outsider, a Midchildan, to give that final order. Whatever she'd gone through had made a serious impact on her social skills; she never used more words than were absolutely necessary.

"Damn," Daimler said. "Should've thought of that. 'Course they'd tap the link, see if anyone calls."

"Keep it cool," Pacer said. "We've been over this. We can't go before it's time, or else we could end up giving them a free chance to ruin it all."

"Unacceptable," said Lancia, bitterness mingling with determination.

Pacer couldn't have agreed more.

~X X X~

"So that's pretty much it," Vita said, hovering in the air with Graf Eisen resting across her shoulders. "Hayate thinks those crazies want to hack into the computer, take over Heimdall, and start firing at random chunks of the surface."

Zafira shook his head.

"Even after all these years, the brutality of the human race never ceases to disgust me."

"Eh? Funny thing for a Guardian Knight to say."

He folded his arms across his chest. For some reason he flew better in human form, so he'd adopted it while he and Vita had gone to their posts.

"When a knight uses violence, he or she does so in service to their master, and to accomplish specific goals. He or she does not cause wanton destruction out of a petulant need to feel important, or lash out at innocents just because they are in pain. People like that are like toddlers throwing a tantrum."

"Well, you'd know from toddlers, Babysitter Supreme," Vita teased. Zafira just sniffed.

"Vivio was better behaved as a kindergartner than these brats."

"Can't argue that, I suppose." She swung Graf Eisen down off her shoulders. "I guess we'll just have to try a little corporal punishment," she said, slapping the hammer head into her palm.

~X X X~

"Is anything wrong, Commodore Harlaown?"

Fate's long blonde hair streamed out around her head in the breeze that swept across the building roof. The white cape of her Barrier Jacket fluttered around her ankles.

She caught one of the long ponytails in her hand and looked at it oddly.

"I wonder..."

_Do you know why, Nanoha?_ she thought, not a telepathic question, but just within her own mind. _We've come so far, fought so many battles, faced so many obstacles these past twenty years. We've grown up, become responsible adults, and raised a beautiful little girl. Yet whenever we go into battle, we dress up like we were still nine. We're hunting down terrorists, vicious killers who want to cause annihilation on an inhuman scale, and I'm a little girl in pigtails again._

"Commodore?"

Fate gave her fellow lightning mage a smile.

"I was just thinking of something, that's all."

_Maybe that's okay, though. Maybe in times like this, you have to be a little childlike. To believe things will come right if you're doing the right thing and you just try hard enough. That there's no such thing as an impossible dream when you have friends by your side._

"And if you're going to go into battle at my side, Lt. Yaris, then you'd better start calling me Fate."

~X X X~

"What about there?" Scott Horizon asked.

Mitch Eagle glanced curiously at his partner.

"Where? That's an office building. There's no drive-in garage. And we checked all three levels of the parking garage at the other building."

They'd been partners for six months now, and Eagle had to admit that the rookie cop was bright. Unlike him, who might make sergeant in another couple of years and finish off his twenty-five behind a desk, Horizon was probably going to earn himself a detective's badge. But sometimes he got too smart, thought too trickily for his own good. Even for the higher-ups, most cop work was hard, grinding routine, not bursts of genius.

"No, I mean the truck, there. The one with the oversized trailer."

Eagle chuckled.

"It ain't oversized. It's a standard shipping container. Bunch of trucks use 'em 'cause it's easier than loading goods out of a container and into a separate trailer for delivery."

"So what's it doing parked there? It's nearly five in the morning." Indeed, the sky was already lightening with the coming dawn.

"Delivery. The apartment building's got a three-level mall in it. One of those places where you don't even need to go outside to do your work, right?" Eagle sometimes wished he lived in a place like that instead of a cheap house in the not-quite-suburbs, but what could you do?

"Do you see anyone offloading cargo? Driver looks like he's just napping in the cab on company time. And the container's just big enough to hold that tank thing we're looking for."

Eagle thought it over, then shrugged. Their orders were to be as thorough as they could, checking every possibility no matter how remote.

"He probably just finished up when the travel ban went up. But, okay. Let's go take a look. Guy bugs me anyway, sleeping through a crisis while we're up getting sore feet."

~X X X~

"Geez, what's _taking_ so long?" Agito groused, tapping her foot in the air. "Everyone just wanted to stay up and see the pretty sunrise or something?"

"I wonder," Mustang mused. "They say that scrying magic couldn't be used because it would be blocked by the AMF, but shouldn't it be possible to find that blocked area that can't be scried? Like a black hole, I mean—you can't see that it's there because no light escapes it, but you can see the black spot where there _ought_ to be something."

"Yeah, exactly!" Agito said.

"You'd have to ask Shamal or Vivio about that," Signum said. "I don't know how scrying magic works in those sort of situations. I strongly doubt, however, that Mistress Hayate overlooked something that took the three of us only a few minutes to think of, so that it must be more difficult than we suspect to scry a picture of an area and notice 'blank spots' where the magic cannot penetrate."

"I appreciate you specifying the _three_ of us in your tally of slow wits, Colonel."

Signum shrugged. She was paid to think tactically, not strategically. And...unlike her previous masters, Hayate could be trusted in that respect.

"Rather than worry about the progress of others in their jobs, it would be better if we stayed focused on being ready to do our own."

~X X X~

Eagle knocked on the cab door. There was no response. He knocked again, harder.

"Hey! You in there! Police!"

The truck driver came awake with a jerk, startled by the sudden noise.

"Eh? What is this?"

"Police," Eagle repeated, showing his badge.

"What do you want? I'm not illegally parked, am I?"

"No. We need to look inside your trailer. Please step out of the cab and open it up."

"Hey, wait a sec. What's this about?"

"Please step out of the cab and open the trailer," Eagle repeated.

"Don't you need some kind of search warrant for that?"

"If you do not open the cab immediately, we will stun you and open it ourselves," Eagle said flatly. Behind him, he heard Horizon unsnap the holster of his weapon.

"Geez, all right, all right. I just drive the damn truck; don't get your panties in a twist."

He reached for the door and swung it open, dropping down next to the officers. He spun the lock control on his finger as he led Eagle and Horizon around back.

"Don't know why you want to look at a bunch of machine parts, but suit yourselves." He pointed the key device at the door and pressed the button. It beeped twice and he put it away. "There you go."

"Open it up," Eagle said, sick of the young man's lip.

"What, you can't use a door? Guess not; it takes two hands and that would mean you'd have to put down the doughnut."

He twisted the latching bar, then pulled, swinging the door wide. Counterweights made the other doors open, swinging out and up.

Two lances of flame blasted out, striking the two policemen. Since then N4's own AMF would prevent conventional magical weapons from firing it was necessary to use ones that converted the engine's magical energy into physical damage. The two officers went down at once.

Martin hoisted first one charred corpse, tossing it into the back of the container, then did the same for the second and slammed the doors shut. He pulled out his communications link and called the Nest.

"Pacer, what are the chances anybody saw that?"

"There aren't any surveillance cameras covering this parking lot; we made sure of that. At this hour, I doubt anyone's looking out of the office building, so if no one was at their apartment windows, we're clear."

"You think?"

Pacer shrugged.

"We've been spotted or we haven't. Nothing we can do can change that now, and if we try to move the truck it'll be like setting up a red flag. No civilian driving allowed under the martial law conditions, you know."

"Guess there's no point in worrying about it, then."

He climbed back into the truck cab, then leaned back and once again pretended to sleep. There was no sign anything had changed, no hint to be seen of the sudden violence.

Scott Horizon wouldn't be making detective after all.

~X X X~

_A/N: Of course, a couple of months after this chapter was written, the After Days chapter of the _StrikerS_ manga came out and had both Nanoha (keeping her normal side-tail) and Fate (one single ponytail) changing their Barrier Jacket hairstyles! Argh! But, this is an alternate-universe setting (plus I'd have to rewrite Fate's whole darned scene...plus I hate Fate's new hairstyle for some reason), so clearly in this continuity they didn't do that. Assume that Nanoha was too upset over Vivio's Linker Core damage post-_StrikerS _to be running around playing with her hair or something._


	24. Chapter XXIII

"Something's wrong," Cranagan Police Captain Aston Connery declared, looking at the displayed image of the city area his precinct was responsible for searching. He pointed to a spot that had yet to be searched. "This gap shouldn't be here. Who's lagging behind?"

"Officers Eagle and Horizon, sir," the aide coordinating the search efforts said after a quick glance at the search grid.

"When did they last report in?"

Another check of the records took only a few seconds.

"Forty-one minutes ago, sir."

"Call them now."

There was a long pause.

"They don't respond, sir."

~X X X~

"Time," Lancia stated.

They were actually within the outer area of confidence, Pacer thought, still subject to the slimmest margins of timing errors, but given that they'd already been found once, he wasn't going to demand they be in the green zone. The slim chance that their timing might be off was, his gut told him, less than the chance that they'd be found out if he waited.

"Do it," he told her.

"Yeah!" Daimler pumped his fist in the air. "Time to give those tyrant bastards some of what they've been dishing out for eighty-five years."

"Initiating."

~X X X~

"Thirty-nine percent of the district area has been eliminated, Mistress Hayate," Rein reported.

"Too slow," Hayate muttered. "It's taking too long." Or worse yet, had they _missed_ it? Had some careless, unimaginative, or even crooked searcher reported an area clear when, in fact, the Nest was there?

She glanced over at the display indicating the Data Engineering Section's progress. This was the problem with a computer network that tied the entire planet's defense and military communications system together; it wasn't like changing a password on an e-mail account to make alterations. The "estimated remaining time" of three hours and forty-seven minutes mocked her.

_And if they're knowledgeable enough about how our system works to write a program to extract our master operations code, they probably know how long it will take to change it._

The thought was prophetic.

A screen flashed open, revealing Caravelle's face.

"General, we have a system intrusion!"

Almost simultaneously, red lights blazed danger from all over the command deck.

"General Yagami, Heimdall's control sequences are initiating! Targeting data is being communicated to all sixteen satellites!"

"Put it up so I can see it, and countermand."

"Yes, ma'am," replied the terrified young woman. Sixteen targets came up, all but one of which were on the surface, including eleven of the world's major cities as well as a number of key military facilities. Next to them were shown the time it would take for the assigned satellites to reach firing position. Somehow, Hayate didn't think the terrorists were going to wait until all sixteen were in place before firing. "General, our commands are being rejected by the system!"

"Caravelle!"

"Yes, ma'am; we're attempting to counter the intrusion."

"You've got twenty-two minutes before Heimdall-2 reaches firing position over Sardon."

~X X X~

"They're fighting us," Lancia reported.

"As expected," Pacer said. The CCDF, after all, had a squad of top-flight talent and the best equipment money could buy. It would have been a miracle if the Front was able to cause all sixteen Heimdalls to launch their strikes. Fortunately, they didn't need sixteen to achieve their victory, though they'd gladly accept whatever extra damage they could inflict.

They only _needed_ one.

~X X X~

"Damn it, Admiral!" Hayate slammed her palms down on the table in frustration. "I'm telling you that if you don't get me that naval support there's a good chance that we're going to lose most of Mid! Are you trying to tell me that you're willing to sacrifice the TSAB's founding world and dimensional trade center because of some jurisdictional pissing contest?"

The gray-haired Vice Admiral Royce reeled back, as if he feared that the mage's sheer anger would somehow be capable of reaching through the communications link and detonating a spell on the _Venetia_'s bridge.

"I'm not saying that!" he all but squealed.

"Funny, it seems that way to me. You tried your utmost as commander of the Capital Fleet to block any transfer of naval units to CCDF authority, and now that we actually need them, you're still refusing to help."

"I'm not refusing!" he cried. "I want to help, I do! It's just that even at flank speed, the fastest vessels are more than two hours from Mid!"

For a long moment the young woman held the older man's gaze transfixed, but then all of the anger drained out of her face.

"Get here as fast as you can anyway," she said, her voice heavy with resignation. "You'll need to clean up the mess, if nothing else. Maybe there'll even be something left. Long Arch out." She cut the connection and slumped back in her chair. "The fleet maneuvers data," she muttered under her breath.

"What?" Gallardo said.

"The robbery at the Arraven Naval Air Station? The one attributed to Sonoma? It wasn't a failure at all. They planned this specifically, timing it for when the fleet was out of range. This is my fault, Major. I should have called for naval support the instant Nightfall went into effect, the moment that I suspected that Heimdall would be the target. Instead I just assumed that it would be available if it was needed. That's why they waited even after we rescued the McLarens. They knew that there was a particular window of time they had to act in."

She contacted the Data Engineering Section.

"Caravelle, how are we doing?"

"We're making some progress. They're using the system against us, but they don't have our resources. I think—General, you should be able to access Heimdall-2."

"You heard her," Hayate snapped. "Can we?"

"Trying...yes, General! Heimdall-2 accepting commands!"

"Cancel targeting information and have it correct position to the middle of the ocean. That'll keep it from being used against anything, and even if they regain control over it it'll be too late for them to do anything before the fleet arrives."

"Yes, ma'am. Entering course adjustment now."

"They're still fighting us, though," Caravelle said. "I don't think we're going to be able to free all of them this way before they fire."

"The Heimdalls require a second firing command before they shoot, don't they, once they're in position? Even with the system redundancies, there can't be that many computers on Mid that are set up to command Heimdall. What if we took them all offline, physically if necessary?" Then she shook her head, realizing the answer to her own question. "Never mind; the Nest has surface-to-orbital communications capacity so that a ground commander could communicate with the Navy. They could just send the command themselves, now that they've taken initial control. All right, keep doing what you can and keep me posted."

"You can bet we will. They're working especially hard to maintain their control of Heimdall-4."

Which in twenty-seven minutes was going to be in position to fire on Cranagan.

"All right. Gallardo," Hayate said, "redirect as much of the search effort as we can to covering the remainder of Quadrant 2."

"Quadrant 2? May I ask why?"

"Because that's where Nanoha is. Carim's gotten everything else right so far, so I'm betting that she has this right as well."

~X X X~

"This is Eagle and Horizon's last reported position, sir," the aide told Captain Connery. "Here is the area they were supposed to check next."

"All right, then. I want a follow-up on that area. Which Tactical unit is closest?"

"Two, I think...yes, Tactical Two."

"Have them follow up, immediately. It's got to mean _something_ that we have two men off the grid. Maybe it's got nothing to do with what we're looking for, but at least it exists. And the last directive from CCDF shifted priority to this quadrant, so _somebody_ thinks that around here is where we need to be looking."

"Yes, sir, redirecting Tactical Two."

He was playing a hunch, assuming that something had happened that required a tactical unit instead of just a regular check, but under the circumstances it didn't seem like he had any other chance.

~X X X~

"Fighting us."

Lancia's control programs were, Pacer knew, doing their best. She was only one operator, though, and it told the tale.

"What's our status?"

"One, Four, Nine, Eleven, and Twelve remain in our control," she informed him. Her terse speech patterns were never abbreviated to the point that they cut off the message.

"Is there a possibility that they could use one of the other eleven against us?"

"Six had a chance to attack Four, but moved out of range to accomplish that before they regained control. Fourteen has a chance to intercept Eleven. That is all."

Pacer nodded. So far, everything was proceeding according to the way Sonoma had planned it. He glanced at the screen, noting the times until the remaining five Heimdall satellites would be in position and charged to fire. It was too bad, he supposed, that Cranagan would be the first. He'd have liked to have inflicted as much damage as possible, something to inflict a crippling blow on Midchilda forever, but it didn't look like that would be possible. A few minutes' wait for the others to line up was time in which the TSAB might somehow find a way to thwart them, and it was necessary that this one blow above all others be struck. Eighteen million lives, the blood of Midchildans who'd sought to expand their dimension-spanning empire at the cost of atrocities on Jarentil. To say nothing of the second-most-important military and political headquarters in the entire TSAB. No greater blow had ever been struck by any freedom fighter in history. It was too bad it would cost their lives, but their heroism and the story of the injustices inflicted on Jarentil would ring out through history. Who knew how many "administered worlds" would find the courage to throw off the TSAB yoke?

There could be no better epitaph.

~X X X~

"We've got company," Martin murmured over the communications link in the cab's dashboard. AMF might have shut down magic, but magic-based technology still worked fine. "Cops, again, but these guys are kitted out in Barrier Jackets."

"I see them," Pacer replied. He probably did, Martin figured, what with the ACC's surveillance and sensory gear. "They look like a police tactical unit. That means there'd be six in total."

"Someone saw us take out the others?"

There was a long pause.

"No. If we were identified there would be a military assault. There are probably following up because the last pair didn't report in."

"Wonder how long we can stall them?"

"Every minute counts."

"And there's no chance the cops have someone who can actually hurt us."

~X X X~

"Rein, if we Unisoned, do you think I could shoot down a Heimdall?"

Rein blinked.

"I don't know, Mistress."

"Even Nanoha doesn't have _orbital_ range on her magic, but _Hraesvelgr_ is designed to hit targets several miles away. If Long Arch provides us with the targeting data so you don't have to worry about correcting my aim and put everything you have into boosting me, do you think it's possible?"

Reinforce Zwei cupped her chin in her palm while she ran through the calculations in her mind.

"It's possible, Mistress," she concluded. "But Heimdall is protected by barriers and armor against outside attack like a warship is. It's very unlikely that even if we were able to strike it we'd be able to actually inflict damage at that range."

"Unlikely but not impossible, right?"

Rein brightened. She was an optimistic person at heart.

"That's right, Mistress! We'll give it our all and save everybody!"

As emergency backup plans went, it stank. But even a nearly-negligible chance of success was better than the zeros her previous ideas had been pulling.

"All right. Let me know when there's..." Hayate did some quick math in her head. "...four minutes until Heimdall-4 is in position. Contact Shamal; we'll get her to fly us as high as possible while we build power."

She sagged back in her seat. It was nice to pretend that she could accomplish something, but Hayate was too much of a realist to ignore the truth. Unless the searchers located the Nest so they could cut off its signal, Cranagan was as good as doomed.


	25. Chapter XXIV

The shots came without warning or challenge, a pure ambush. One punched through the shell of the container, a jet of green flame that streaked towards one of the tactical unit's officers. Only the fact that they were trained fighters anticipating trouble let him get up a Protection barrier in time, staving off most of the damage.

The trooper that had been investigating the back of the truck, though, wasn't so lucky. Despite the fact that the doors had been opened, presumably giving a view of what was inside and a couple of seconds' more warning, she wasn't able to conjure any defenses, forcing her to take the hit in her Barrier Jacket alone.

The unit leader didn't understand what had happened, why an experienced officer would have failed to protect herself, but it was soon explained. One of the other officers fired a stunning blast at the truck's driver, who'd been standing right next to the downed trooper. The shot streaked in, then suddenly fizzled away, dissipating without even striking any defensive magic.

_AMF_, he realized. _AMF!_

"Unit leader to T-3," he snapped into his audio link. "Get a look through those back doors for visual confirmation of the target, but look out; it's got AMF! Don't get close!"

The downed officer was trying to crawl away, out of AMF range, but another shot left her lying still. More flame bolts emerged from the container, streaking out towards the various officers, while the truck driver darted away, out of the radius of the anti-magic field and towards the fight. The troopers fought back, but it was hard for them to deal with an enemy that could hammer against them without having to worry about counterattacks. The tactical team was all C-ranked mages except for one B-, which was more than adequate for police operations but not for military jobs.

Rather than come down from his vantage point to join the fight, the leader reported in at once.

"Precinct command, this is Tactical Two. We've engaged a possible target with AMF capability at the parking lot behind 117 Shepard. Seeking verification. One officer down."

The driver was trading shots with two of the officers, supported by intermittent fire from whatever was inside the trailer. The leader raised his device and launched a shot against the enemy mage, hoping to overwhelm him. At least that target could be taken down! Meanwhile. T-3 had worked his way around behind the truck. The position exposed him to attack, but he'd obeyed orders and stayed at a distance so he was able to deflect a shot that would otherwise have hit with a Round Shield.

"T-3 to unit leader!" buzzed over the audio link. "Confirm, repeat confirm it's the target!"

"Get out of there! Unit leader to team, retreat to cover; we have confirmation of the target." Their orders were to search for it, explicitly _not_ to try and engage, which given the AMF made a lot of sense. And if they could lure the mage away from his fire support they might be able to deal with him at least.

"Precinct command, Tactical Two. We have confirmation! _Target located!_" he shouted as he dodged counterfire. There was a silence that lasted no more than a second but seemed to take an eternity. And then...

"Roger that, Tactical Two. Relaying message."

~X X X~

"We've got it!" one of the bridge crew exclaimed, jumping to her feet in her excitement. "117 Shepard Street!" She added the location; it gleamed a bright blue on the map, in the heart of what had once been downtown Cranagan before the founding of the TSAB, now near the northeast edge of the metropolitan area, a leftover of a historical era.

"Send it to the mages now!" Hayate ordered, then opened a screen to the four of them. "Nanoha-chan, Fate-chan, Signum, Vita, _go!_ We've found the Nest; the location's on the way."

"We've got it. I'll be there in under two minutes," Nanoha said. "Accel Fin!" She went blasting off.

"There's only eight minutes until Heimdall-4 is ready to fire on Cranagan," Hayate said. "Give it everything you've got, Nanoha-chan."

"Yes!" Not "Of course!" or "Don't I always?" but just that one single word. The look of determination on her face was almost superfluous in conveying her intensity. Hearing it, seeing it, Hayate began to relax for the first time in hours. She knew the enemy was well within Nanoha's ability to defeat.

"Can you get me a current satellite image of that location?" she asked.

"I think so, ma'am."

In less than five seconds, another screen opened up, showing the parking lot and the container truck which had to be where the Nest was hidden. Occasional sparks of light testified that whatever unit had found it was still being attacked while they remained on hand to make sure it wasn't going to try to move, either in the truck or by driving out on its own. It didn't seem to be making such a move, though; the Front probably figured—rightly—that it wouldn't have a chance to evade flying mages anyway, who were the only ones capable of damaging it.

Then Hayate realized something else that made her blood run cold.

"Those two buildings," she said, pointing to two skyscrapers sitting kittycorner to each other around the parking lot. "What are they?"

Rein pulled the information up at once.

"436 Commercial Cross is the Hanbury Tower, an office building, forty-three stories high. 117 Shepard Street is a residential complex featuring four hundred and eighty suites as well as a three-level mall with complete shopping facilities, plus laundry facilities, gym, swimming—"

"Get the city planning data for those two buildings and simulate the effect of a full-strength Starlight Breaker centered on the N4's present location."

"Yes, Mistress." It took her twenty-four seconds to do it; Hayate knew because she counted each of them off as they scrolled by. "Mistress..."

"What is it, General?" Gallardo asked. He hadn't figured it out—he didn't have Hayate's experience working with Nanoha's magic—but he knew something was wrong.

"How bad is it, Rein?"

"Um...there's only a twenty-eight percent chance that 436 Commercial Cross will take enough structural damage to unbalance it."

"Rein..."

"117 Shepard Street...that building is a certainty to fall."

Hayate sighed.

"That's what I thought."

"Mistress...it's not going to fall vertically like a properly demolished building will. It's going to topple. The direction and distance aren't certain; it will depend on the precise pattern of damage sustained as well as other factors."

"What happens when a forty-story building falls over sideways into the middle of a densely populated district?" Hayate murmured to herself.

"That address...that's the center of the commercial district of the Old City, from before the TSAB was established," said Gallardo.

"Well, we're making progress, aren't we?" Hayate said, her voice sick. "We started with a potential death toll of billions, got it down into the millions, and now the slaughter will only be a few thousand or so." No, it wasn't the end of the world (literally) they had once been facing, but it was still carnage on an unheard-of scale, except during actual wartime. In terms of civilian losses...

_Capital City Defense Force_, Hayate thought. These were the people she was supposed to protect. In its way, this was even harder to accept than the idea of the Heimdall firing. Intellectually, of course, she knew that wasn't true. If Heimdall-4 fired, those people were dead anyway, and millions more besides. But it _felt_ worse. Apocalypse didn't have faces or broken bodies. Millions dead was so unimaginable that the brain couldn't make it seem real, but this level of tragedy did.

Not least because she'd be ordering one of her best friends to do the killing.

"What are Signum and Vita's ETA at the site?" she asked.

"Five more minutes for Colonel Signum, seven for Major Vita," someone answered, tracking the progress of the knights on screen. _Not enough time. If only it had been Vita's quadrant._ "Only four for Commodore Harlaown; she's faster." But Fate would be almost as bad as Nanoha; since her hand-to-hand attacks were optimized for fighting living targets she would have to use something like a Plasma Zanber Breaker to take the ACC out. That didn't have quite the impact of Nanoha's Starlight Breaker, but close enough that the buildings would still be at serious risk. Even presuming that she could get to the site, charge and fire, which wasn't a certainty.

Truthfully, the terrorists had managed to pick just about the absolute worst place they could have stashed the Nest from Hayate's point of view.

"I should have known it would come to this," she murmured aloud. "I should have known."

~X X X~

Nanoha came to a halt in midair over the parking lot, which gave Vivio the chance to catch up.

"Are you ready for this, Raising Heart?"

**"Good to go, my master."**

"I doubt that fight down there was very intense; those look like police tactical uniforms. Will there be enough energy available for you to fire Starlight Breaker?"

**"Cartridge substitution will work,"** Raising Heart said, then after a heartbeat added, **"I can be shot."**

Nanoha chuckled, making Vivio suspect that it was an old joke between mage and device.

"All right, then. Engage Blaster System, Full Drive."

**"Blaster System Refined: Full Drive."**

Vivio winced as four Blaster Bits, looking much like free-floating copies of Raising Heart's spearhead, phased into existence around Nanoha. Ten years gone now and she still remembered how much it had hurt to be on the receiving end of what Nanoha was setting up. Small wonder it had damaged her Linker Core when that kind of brute force had had to be used to get the Relic out of her. At least the refined Blaster System, while still enhancing Nanoha's attacks with her own life energy, wouldn't inflict permanent damage to her the way the prototype had. Nanoha pointed Raising Heart at the container truck and for the briefest instant a pink light began to form at the tip, but almost at once Nanoha broke off the spell, snapping Raising Heart up to a one-handed grip.

"Raising Heart, connect Long Arch-1."

A communications screen popped up, showing Hayate's worried face.

"Hayate-chan, I'm here, but...if I use a Starlight Breaker at full power, the blast radius will reach the lower floors of those buildings. You saw what it did to the Cradle, and that was firing at a single living target, not intentionally trying to destroy inanimate matter."

"I know," she said. "Rein ran the simulations just now, while you were en route."

"Then...shouldn't we wait for Vita-chan? She could crack through the Nest with Destruction Hammer and not hurt any of the surrounding area."

Hayate shook her head.

"There's no time. There's only a few minutes left until Heimdall-4 is in position to fire. Vita can't get there by then and even Fate-chan would have under a minute to arrive, set up, charge a spell, and fire. It has to be you."

"What if I used Divine Buster instead? That would shoot straight down; it would only hurt the sewer system directly underneath the parking lot."

Hayate's eyes were sad.

"You've seen the design specs, Nanoha-chan. Can you guarantee Divine Buster would do it in one hit? Or that you'd have enough time to keep shooting multiple times until it did succeed?"

Vivio saw the shock cross her mother's face at Hayate's plain speaking. "Maximum Power" was basically Nanoha's life credo—one that Vivio appreciated. What was the point of doing anything if you were only going to make half-hearted attempts at it? _Do you want to hedge your bets and play it safe?_ was not something anyone had ever _bothered_ to ask Takamachi Nanoha before. The answer was so obvious the question was pointless.

On the other hand, no one had ever asked Nanoha to kill anyone before.

Indeed, in all her two decades of magical combat, in some of the most intense battles in TSAB history, Nanoha had never killed _anyone_. Even the concept of "it was his life or mine" didn't exist for someone who controlled the power of a tactical nuclear weapon at her fingertips and could express it as non-lethal magic damage.

Until now.

Yes, the blast radius from a Starlight Breaker wouldn't kill anyone directly, but Vivio didn't have to be an architect to tell that ripping out the bottom floors of a skyscraper wouldn't do much good for the people on the thirty-plus stories above them.

"'Save should the King's Mother be willing to bear the crimson brand'?" Nanoha said, her voice half-choked.

Hayate nodded once.

"Carim was right again," she echoed her friend's pain. The reference also let Vivio know what the odd quotation was from, one of Carim's prophecies.

_Prophecy_. A glimpse into an immutable future.

"Like hell."

If it thought innocent people were going to die, and her mother was going to bear the weight of that choice forever, then destiny was just going to have to think again.

"Like _hell_ she was right," Vivio repeated.

"Vivio...honey...if I don't do this, the terrorists down there will shoot Heimdall at Cranagan. Everyone in the city could die."

She shook her head.

"That's not what I meant. We just need to keep the blast effect from hitting the buildings, right?" Vivio clenched her fist. "Let me do that."

"Vivio..."

"Mama, I know I'm not a great shooting mage like you or a fighter like Vita and Signum, but this is what I can do. It's what I'm _best_ at."

"No! Vivio, if you can't hold it back, then...the buildings—"

_Will probably land on me, too._

She nodded.

"I know." She smiled wistfully at her mother. "Aunt Hayate sent me along as your escort to protect you, right?" She took Nanoha's hands in her own. "I know what it would do to you, to watch those people die from what you did, even if it meant saving millions of others. So this is protecting you, too. And...this is what I do, mama. I stand in front of people at risk and I stop the threats from reaching them. So please believe in me, okay?"

Her eyes were stinging. Vita would give her grief forever if she knew Vivio was going to start blubbering. She felt like she was about to break down completely when suddenly Nanoha pulled her into a fierce hug.

"All right," she murmured. "Give it your best, Vivio."

"You too, mama. Don't you dare hold back even a little bit."

When Nanoha released her, Vivio simply let herself fall, her wings fragmenting into little pieces as she plummeted.

"Parsifal," she whispered.

_**"Ja, Meister."**_

"Overdrive. _Sankt Kaiser _Mode."


	26. Chapter XXV

"Pacer, we've got incoming!" Daimler shouted, looking at his scanning gear.

"More cops?"

"No way; the magical point values are way too high and they're _increasing_."

"Three minutes and eleven seconds remaining," Lancia stated.

"All barriers to maximum power," Pacer said, suiting his actions to his words. _Just a little longer. If we can hold out just a little longer, then we'll have everything we've dreamed of!_

~X X X~

Cartridges loaded, three of them one after another as Parsifal charged up for his third Device Mode. Vivio had done this before in practice, and even once in a real situation, but it was still a shock as it hit her, ice water flowing through her body as Parsifal used the stored magic to temporarily restore what Vivio had lost. Her unique genetics had been tailored to channel and control the near-limitless power of the Saint's Cradle via an implanted Relic. In Sankt Kaiser Mode, Parsifal built a temporary construct within her to simulate the effect of that Relic and support her own damaged Linker Core.

It didn't make her a living god, but for so long as it was in effect, she was able to tap her _own_ power almost fully, nearly restoring her to what she would have been without the damage. The effect wasn't perfect, but it operated almost to the reverse of Nanoha's limiter, basically jumping everything she did _up_ by two full ranks.

Her Barrier Jacket changed as she fell, electric blue lines flowing as if to simulate power conduits through the gray of her bodysuit. Metal plates hung from her waist at the sides and back like a tailcoat, and Parsifal expanded into a blued-steel breastplate covering her entire torso. The impact of its defensive fields hitting the parking lot shattered blacktop, spraying debris; Vivio dropped to one knee, then immediately came back up. A flamebolt fired from inside the tank at her from one of the ACC's weapons, and she slapped it away contemptuously, not even bothering with a shield spell. Yes, she was showing off, but more than that she was boosting her own confidence, assuring herself that she really did have the power to do what she intended.

Vivio tugged Parsifal's magazine free and inserted a fresh eight-cartridge clip. Running out would not be a good thing.

_All right, Nanoha-mama_, she reached up telepathically. _Are you ready?_

~X X X~

Nanoha wiped the tears from her eyes on the back of her glove.

"Do...do you think she'll be okay, Raising Heart?"

**"She's a good girl, my master. You can trust her."**

"Yeah..." And why not? Vivio had trusted _her_ to save her, back when she was a child. Couldn't she extend that trust back? It wasn't like she hadn't often enough in the past: Raising Heart, Yuuno, Chrono, Fate, Hayate, Vita, Subaru, Teana...they'd all stood at her back and supported her in battle before this, even when the stakes were as high or higher as they now were. "You're right. Raising Heart! Blaster System Refined: Full Drive!"

The Blaster Bits swept into position, forming the four corners of a downward-pointing diamond formation around Nanoha. A forest of brilliant pink wings burst from behind Raising Heart's spearpoint, ten in all.

**"Charging. Count X...IX...VIII..."**

Streams of light swept up and in, gathering at Raising Heart's tip and at the point of each Bit in swelling pink globes, absorbing all the excess magic released during the fight between the police and the terrorists, even scooping up the background "noise" given off by the magic-based technology that saturated Cranagan. That was the strength of Starlight Breaker, that it _didn't_ rely on just its creator to provide its power.

**"Count VII...VI..."**

Of course, that also made it a real "magical girl's finishing move," as anime-fan Hayate had always called it, because normally it could only be used at the end of a fight, when the clash of spell after spell had saturated the environment with released magic. Just firing the spell without charging up first was no different than a Divine Buster that happened to burst on impact instead of staying a pure beam attack.

But then again, there were other ways to charge up a spell. The Blaster System was one. Cartridges were another.

**"Count V...IV..."**

Raising Heart's magazine feed pumped one, two, three, four, five times in a row, exhausting the magazine and spraying brass in every direction.

~X X X~

"All right, Parsifal, let's do this."

_**"Jawohl."**_

In rapid succession, Parsifal loaded and fired off four cartridges, the surge of raw power jolting into Vivio. It raged within her, fighting to break lose, but she mastered it, then added more from her own store of magic.

A Limit Break was a mage's ultimate spell, one that tapped resources and channeled power over the "limit" that she could ordinarily handle. It was the purest expression of their technique, generally some kind of superhuman attack like Nanoha's Starlight Breaker, Signum's _Sturmfalken_, or Hayate's _Ragnarok_.

Vivio's was not. Why would it be? Breaking things or causing destruction wasn't what she was good at.

The triangular rune of Belkan magic burst into existence beneath her feet, glowing a brilliant rainbow-streaked white.

~X X X~

"I've channeled all the power I could from everything unnecessary to the defense systems," Daimler said. "They're maxed out. Do you think we can stand up to whatever she's doing?"

"I don't think whatever _she's_ doing is going to be the problem," Pacer said. Daimler blinked in surprise, then looked back at his sensor screen and saw what it was picking up from _above_ them.

**"Count III..."**

Nanoha yanked the clip, flung it aside, and shoved in a fresh, full magazine. Raising Heart burned through it just as fast as the first. Starlight Breaker was, after all, _designed_ to absorb and hold excess energy before firing; she could pump far more into it from loaded cartridges than she could for regular attacks. If she'd tried double-loading a Divine Buster she'd just waste the excess or damage her own Linker Core trying to contain it. But Starlight Breaker was different.

**"Count II..."**

The globes of brilliant pink magic had swollen to six feet across now; Nanoha's arms shook from the effort of controlling the enormous forces that blazed around her, blindingly bright.

**"Count I..."**

_Vivio!_

~X X X~

_Ready, mama!_

"Limit Break: Saint's Armor Technique, magic-damage optimization."

"Starlight..._Breaker_!"

_"Stahl-Festung!"_

~X X X~

The brilliant pink holocaust speared down from the sky, five beams merging together into one pillar of destruction. The truck was all but vaporized in the instant of contact; the N4 literally fell through the empty space that had been occupied by the trailer and hit the pavement with a jolt. The raging magical energies swelled outwards in all directions from the point of impact in a swelling hemisphere.

And stopped.

They stopped because they crashed into an obstacle, a magical shield-wall of rainbow light. Vivio had conjured it in the shape of a concave shell, like half of a dome suddenly built between the Nest and the two skyscrapers, just outside of its AMF range so that nothing would sap its strength, the curved lip at the top to keep any power that fountained up the shield-wall from slashing out at the higher levels of the buildings. She'd caught the Starlight Breaker's tide of destruction behind a levee. The impact knocked her back down to one knee; with her arms outstretched to launch and hold the spell it almost looked like she was praying.

She'd have liked to, if someone could tell her just who or what she was supposed to pray to. So instead she gritted her teeth and tried to concentrate on trying to _answer_ the prayers of her mother and Hayate and Raising Heart and the several thousand people or so now lining the windows watching the fireworks and having no idea what was happening but trusting to the TSAB's mages to protect them. She felt rather than heard Parsifal pop another cartridge, sustaining the shield and Kaiser Mode itself with additional magic.

Every muscle in her body was drawn whipcord-tight from the strain, and sweat that hadn't been there a second ago dripped into her eyes. She fought for control, feeling _every damn square inch_ of the shield battered simultaneously with ridiculous amounts of force. She'd only felt something like this once before in her life, on board the Cradle, and that time she hadn't been trying to _stop_ it; she'd _wanted_ the Starlight Breaker to do its work then.

_What made me think I could do this?_ she thought. _What made me think_ anyone _could do this?_

_No! Focus!_

Her patched, jury-rigged Linker Core stuttered, trying to contain the enormous energies passing through it, but Vivio clamped her will down and kept going with everything she had.

~X X X~

"I've never seen anything like this!" exclaimed one of Long Arch's staff. The image view of the battle had replaced the map on the largest holoscreen. "That's a shield spell, too, which means that the energy is being reflected back into the zone of effect instead of being shunted or absorbed."

"Did you think this might happen, General?" Gallardo asked. "Because of the prophecy and all? Is that why you paired Warrant Officer Takamachi with her mother?"

Hayate chuckled.

"That would have been clever of me, wouldn't it? If you want to write the report that way, feel free; it might make up for my incompetence in letting things get to this point in the first place."

She paused, then pointed at the screen.

"But let's save the praise until things are finished, shall we?"

"What?"

"Pretty as all that looks, the Nest is still intact inside there."

~X X X~

Daimler panted for breath. He'd cracked his head against the floor falling out of his seat when the initial strike destroyed the trailer and blood ran down the side of his face. Pacer was in little better condition despite having been properly buckled into his padded seat. Both of them had layered their own personal barrier spells into the N4's defense, since every little bit might be what bought the precious seconds that they needed, and it was that strain more than any physical injuries that took the toll on both of them. Sparks flew as a conduit burst; there'd been plenty of leakage and the physical armor had been badly battered, the gun turrets stripped off the frame, and it was listing to one side where the tracked wheels had been torn away.

Even so, core systems were functioning. Lancia was still at work, her single-minded devotion to her task impressive. If they could hold out only a bit longer, they'd have won.

~X X X~

It wasn't working. Or rather, Nanoha knew, it _was_ working, but not fast enough. She was grinding down their defenses, battering through them with main force, but the AMF was taking just enough off the strength of her Starlight Breaker that the magical and physical defenses were holding up. They'd come down, but possibly not soon enough.

But she could change that.

Nanoha wasn't just feared in combat because of the raw power she could toss around. Since the moment she'd been awakened to her magic, she'd worked hard to make sure she could get the most out of whatever she did. That included improving and refining her spells. Her high-end attacks weren't just powerful; they incorporated an accidental discovery she'd made back when she was nine: they had barrier-piercing capabilities. She'd held back at first because of Vivio's shield and the lives it was trying to save, but there was no choice.

"Break—"

Raising Heart's wings flared even more brightly.

"Shoot!"

Renewed power exploded down the length of the pillars of light.

~X X X~

"Aaaaagh!" Vivio twitched and shouted as she felt the sudden surge of power from within her shields, the increase in how the lightning in the bottle ate away at the containing force. Where before the Starlight Breaker had simply beat on her shield wall with raw power, it was now eating away at the spell's substance, like acid eating through a piece of cloth.

_**"Nega—"**_

"No, Parsifal!"

Her Device fell silent, aborting its spell. Vivio's defensive magic had enhancements of their own; _Negation_ would dispel nasty abilities like barrier-piercing that any attacks striking her might possess.

But she couldn't use it.

"We can't, Parsifal. Mama...Mama needs it to...punch through the enemy's shield."

Parsifal loaded another cartridge, the shell pinging off the asphalt. Was that six now? Seven? Vivio didn't know. She had lost count.

_**"Ja...Meister..."**_

_Just...a little...longer!_ she begged.

~X X X~

"Forward area breach!" Daimler screamed. Pacer swayed in his chair as his own defenses were hammered down. Spears of pink light pierced the roof and the floor below as shields failed and weak spots were created by the interaction of shredding barriers. He fought as hard as he could, putting everything he had into his own contribution. How much longer did they have to go? Thirty seconds? A minute?

Then the remaining time became irrelevant.

"Total shutdown!" Daimler cried. Screens blazed with red light, screaming failure to those on board, and an ocean of pink drowned Pacer's hopes.

~X X X~

"Enemy signal has stopped!" Caravelle's voice was like a cry from Heaven for Hayate. "Complete control reestablished."

"Wipe all targets," Hayate ordered at once. It was superfluous-even if the Heimdalls reached their target positions with charged weapons they wouldn't shoot without a fire command-but she wasn't going to tempt fate. "Instruct all satellites to return to standby positions in standard defensive formation."

It was, she though, the first time the experience had differed from one of her sci-fi anime series. There, when the kill-sats inevitably went out of control and targeted the good guys, they'd only be stopped from firing at the last instant, even as the villains were giving the fire command. Not so here. If her screen was accurate, they'd had all of forty-seven seconds left over.

~X X X~

Vivio felt the instant that the Nest went down and the city was saved. She could tell because the pressure on her shields suddenly grew sharply worse, with no AMF to dampen the power and no enemy barriers to absorb any of it. It was too much to hold, not this way with her shield wall stretched thin to cover such a large area.

_Parsifal can negate now!_ she thought, and was about to give the order when there was a loud snapping sound, and the cobalt-blue crystal that was Parsifal's heart cracked right through. Vivio felt the sudden drop in power, the enhancement of Sankt Kaiser Mode ebbing as the artificial Relic within her began to decay at once without Parsifal to control it. Desperately, Vivio pulled up every bit of power she could handle and threw it into the Steel Fortress, but it was too little, too late.

She was already collapsing, unconscious from the energy drain and the shock of the spell breaking down before the leading edge of the blast caught her and knocked her no-longer-Barrier-Jacketed body tumbling.


	27. Chapter XXVI

Something had gone wrong.

This did not take a particularly drastic leap of deduction on Wilton Sonoma's part. He was alive; therefore the plan had failed. Requiring only a slightly greater level of intellect was the thought that the six-hour period of martial law between two and eight a.m. had had something to do with it.

So.

He passed smoothly through the crowd, then stepped into one of the lines in front of the correct counter. Things were running slowly this morning, thanks to the delays. The transport ban-presumably so the TSAB could scour the streets for the Nest without worrying about it moving around-had thrown off the plans of many of Cranagan's citizens. They were complaining, surly, and short-tempered.

Since there had been no public announcement that without those delays they'd all be dead, Sonoma supposed that he couldn't blame them.

His own pace was dictated by those around him. He stayed calm, reasonable, professional. He was not happy and didn't hide it—smiling and cheerful would have stood out like a sore thumb—but he wasn't howling and ranting and making a scene, either.

And at least unlike the rest of the herd surrounding him, he had good reason to be angry at the TSAB.

He wondered how, precisely, they'd gone wrong. Had there been a spy in Solstice's cell or an informant? If not, how had they discovered her? Had they learned the plan _from_ her, and if so how? Had she cracked and told them freely, or been stupid enough to keep a record in written or data form, or had the "heroes" of the TSAB given up their vaunted ethics and used mind probes, if they'd had anyone on hand with that rare skill? Had Pacer's arrangements to bring the Nest into the city been somehow flawed? Had Daimler or Martin given the game away somehow when executing it? Had the Navy been intelligent enough to see through Sonoma's own charade and recognized that he'd really been after scheduling data, then changed its operations so ships had been in position to destroy the Heimdalls before they could fire on the surface? Had they slipped somewhere else? Or was it not so much a case of the Liberation Front failing as of the TSAB succeeding through brilliance or through the diligent application of manpower and technology?

Possibilities. Too many different ones.

But he'd have liked to know the truth, and not just for the sake of intellectual curiosity. It had been his greatest scheme, what would have been his masterstroke, and he'd have liked to know where it had went wrong. Even failures brought some gains, lessons to be learned for next time.

"All passengers awaiting departure for Union Air flights, please be aware that there has been a two-hour delay on all flight times," echoed over the loudspeaker. Mass grumbling and complaints were heard from various points in the crowd.

"First half an hour, then one hour, now two! Next they'll say we have to come back tomorrow!" one woman erupted shrilly from the Union Air queue two lines over.

Of course, there was another good reason why he wanted to learn what had happened, thought Sonoma. Grand plans produced grand failures, and grand failures were often the killing grounds for the careers of those who planned them. That was true in any industry, and in terrorism the metaphor too often turned literal. When the questions were asked—and they would be—Sonoma wanted to be able to point with confidence and say, "_This_ is why the plan failed, and _that_ person is to blame." Preferably the one or ones identified would be in TSAB custody or dead as a result of their mistakes, or if they'd turned informer be available to receive the just rewards of their treachery.

If the story Sonoma told was the truth instead of something he'd had to concoct, so much the better. He was fond of the truth; it could be wielded with all the same cunning and dexterity as a clever lie but didn't break under the strain. It was only thought to be weak because those who believed in it were so often innocent naifs that expected it to prevail on its own without being properly used. It was no different than any other weapon; no matter how powerful, it still had to be employed properly in battle.

That thought reminded Sonoma of how his group had failed to use the overwhelming power of the Heimdall satellites and made his frustration and bitterness rise. He didn't bother concealing the emotions; they fit right in with everyone else around him.

In a couple of more minutes, he got to the front of the line. The Pan-Midchildan clerk looked like he'd expected: harried and exhausted, without even the plastic smile of the service industry on her face.

"How can I help you?"

He tossed his fake ID onto the counter with an exaggerated gesture.

"I'm here to register my ticket for the 11:15 flight to Verdance," he snapped. "Everything was _supposed_ to be reserved; I didn't expect to have to stand around in line all day."

"We're sorry, sir. The transit ban in place this morning has everything behind schedule."

"I know. I had to miss breakfast at my hotel because the kitchen staff supposedly couldn't get in to work! If this is how this city is run, then I'm glad to be leaving."

She didn't answer, instead just buzzing her fingers over the keyboard.

"Your check-in is confirmed, sir. Just present your ID at the baggage check and the gate to board. Your flight is scheduled to leave with only a fifteen-minute delay."

"There's a small mercy. At least I'm not flying Union."

His comment made her stock phrase ironic. "Yes, sir. Baggage check is on this level; just follow the green line. Thank you for choosing Pan-Midchildan."

Sonoma scooped up the ID and walked away from the counter, moving through the seething mass of humanity. There were those among his colleagues who would see the fact that he'd set up an escape plan for a suicide mission as a sign of treachery or corruption. This was not just true for his enemies, but perfectly innocent and sincere members of the cause as well, blinded by righteousness to good operational planning. Solstice would be one of them if she was still free; he knew the type. Inevitably it was the young who thought that way. Their elders had learned to plan for success, but be aware of possible failure. Those too foolish to learn that lesson were in prison or a grave.

So of course Sonoma had set his escape up in advance. If things went wrong, as they had, he wouldn't be left scrambling. He'd known exactly what to do and where to go, including several fallback steps along the way if need be. His first priority was to leave the city. Leaving Mid was vital, too, but the Cranagan spaceport was too obvious. Better to use a less-traveled route, one located away from the action, and to have all travel plans made in advance so he didn't look like a man on the run.

He stopped at the Pan-Midchildan baggage check and set down his one suitcase, then again presented the ID.

"Flight A618 to Verdance?" the clerk verified.

"That's right."

"One bag only?"

"Yes."

"Any special handling requests?"

"No." He let some testiness seep into his voice to preserve the picture of the harassed traveler.

"All right. Next!"

Sonoma moved on. The suitcase was nothing but a prop, containing business clothing, underwear, and toiletries. He'd actually bought it, and its contents, in Cranagan, for the purpose of preserving the image of a business traveler. Such a person would have luggage; therefore so would Sonoma, but it contained nothing that he needed or had used so that if need be he could leave it unclaimed.

That part Solstice would understand. An illusionist understood the importance of presenting a complete false picture, even the unimportant parts, so that the audience's eye didn't rest for a moment on a missing spot and see through the entire game.

He stopped at a vending machine and purchased coffee, drinking it quickly but not rushing, using it as an opportunity to observe the crowd. The security presence was increased, but not overwhelmingly so. This wasn't really a surprise, since the TSAB didn't really know what they were looking for, not his face or current identity or even necessarily if he was in Cranagan at all. Closing the airports would have been too much of an economic and public-relations loss in the absence of an immediate threat or solid information.

Even presuming that they knew about him at all.

So the roads were open, the trains had resumed running, and the air was once more the province of the masses instead of only the Air Force's mage warriors. Meanwhile security was increased and a careful eye kept out for suspicious behavior.

Finishing his coffee, Sonoma tossed away the container, checked the time, and strolled towards the gate transports. Rather than have to stream the tens of thousands of passengers through corridors and tunnels, the Cranagan airport used short-range, automated teleporters to warp passengers between the main terminal and their departure gates. The passengers just inserted their ID, their gate was identified automatically, the teleport was calibrated, and off they went. There were ten in the bank, so he just joined the shortest line and waited, making a show of checking the time every twenty or thirty seconds the way a good half of his fellow passengers were. There was a certain amount of jostling, even a couple of near-fights quickly stifled by security, but for the most part the line moved quickly and Sonoma soon took his turn, stepping into the warp chamber and watching the Mid-style sigil glow brightly on the floor.

Then, silence.

The teleporter had taken him to a departure gate, but there was no hubbub of voices, no blare of announcements over the loudspeaker, nothing at all. The chairs and aisles were empty, the check-in desk unmanned, no one present at all-other than a blonde woman in a black Barrier Jacket and white cape, carrying a Device that looked like a short-handled axe with a blunt edge.

"Wide-area dimensional criminal Wilton Sonoma—" she began, but he was already in motion, his Device dropping into his hand, Barrier Jacket setting up while he prepared a short-range teleport.

**"Thunder Rage,"** the axe device said dryly, snapping off the lightning spell at Sonoma. He parried with a quick Protection, but his teleport was disrupted; they'd clearly been ready for it, aware of his capabilities. He was going to have to fight his way past the woman, and from the strength of her spell's impact, he didn't like the odds. It had hit as hard as an A's, even a AA's "big gun," and her Device had tossed it at him offhandedly as a quick way to break up his teleport.

Still, as he'd just been thinking a few minutes ago, weapon strength didn't settle fights. The ability to use that strength did.

"—you are under arrest for unauthorized use of magic within the city, theft, kidnapping, espionage, murder, terrorism, and conspiracy to commit genocide. Surrender and you will receive the right to defend yourself at the hearing."

He charged her while she was finishing the speech, swinging his device in an arc before him, launching fireballs.

"Meteor Burst!"

**"Defenser."**

The fireballs exploded against her shield. Sonoma doubted that they'd done any damage, but they were mostly light and smoke anyway, a distraction.

"Assassin's Kiss!" His hand swept up at her flank, the barrier-piercing spell making has blade as lethal as any Belkan knight's weapon.

**"Sonic Move."**

She whirled away from him in a blur of motion, covering a good thirty feet and making sure to keep him at long range where she definitely outclassed him.

"Fine, want to play shootout? We can do that." His perception of the scene hadn't missed the gate windows or what was outside them, including a jet loading passengers at the next gate over. "Flames of suffering, come to my hand!" The bright orange Mid-style rune blazed up beneath Sonoma as his device began to burn with a flaming aura, ringed by additional rings of fiery runes like a cannon barrel.

"Plasma Lancer!"

Six spearlike blasts formed in the air around her and streaked towards Sonoma. He raised his free hand, conjuring Protection again, but two of the blasts got through, knocking him down. Nonetheless he held his focus, keeping the cannon spell charged and ready.

"Hades Ignition! _Burn!_"

A raging spiral of flame blasted from the dagger's point, not at the TSAB mage but towards the broad window and the jet with its four hundred or so passengers outside. It was nothing compared to what the Front had come to accomplish in Cranagan, but still a blow to strike, a mark to leave behind.

"Defenser Plus!"

The shimmering yellow veil sprang up in front of the window just before the attack hit home. Sonoma's fiery buster raged its fury against the barrier spell for over ten seconds, then died away, with only a couple of warped spots in the glass to show where any power from the lethal spell had gotten through at all.

_How strong is she?_

**"Plasma Rage."**

Pseudolightning blew him off his feet and sent him crashing painfully through three rows of chairs.

"The law catches up with you, and instead of escaping or fighting for your freedom, your priority is to try and murder innocent people!"

He looked up at her, a little dizzy after taking the hit, and he saw nothing but fury in her expression.

"The blood of the innocents of Jarentil demands blood in return!" Sonoma roared at her. "You won't have me for some puppet trial so you can pretend that you have 'mercy' or 'justice'! This is a war, us against every one of you, not just you military lackeys but those people out there who insure that you keep your power. And in war, _people die!_"

"Lightning Bind!"

Before he could do anything else, circlets of energy clamped around his wrists, pulling him upright and yanking his arms and legs into outstretched, helpless position. He tried to call up magic, but his Linker Core was blocked. He'd have to fight through the block and break free to do anything.

"You're wrong," the woman threw in his face. A runic circle formed beneath her, swelling larger and larger, until the outer edge nearly reached to Sonoma. Lightning crackled along the complex lines and symbols of the rune.

"You're not at war. You're just criminals, diseased minds who feel nothing but hate. You have no country to fight for, no population to defend, only your own malice driving you to hurt others."

She closed her eyes, holding the device vertically before her body. Tiny sparks of light began to form in the air, swirling into existence, swelling and growing, ten, twenty, fifty, more of them.

"The only people who have died so far are agents of one law enforcement force or another, people who have sworn to risk everything for the sake of those innocents you mock."

The air seemed to throb with the weight of gathering power. Sonoma fought desperately against his bonds, but made no headway; they held him fast.

"They've worked, and they've fought, and they've given their all, sometimes even their lives, and because of it you've accomplished nothing. No one else has died."

The motes of light, countless now, began to flatten and extend into arrow-points. The golden orb in the heart of the axe flashed, and the arsenal of projectiles crackled with electricity to match, like it was a pulsing heart driving blood.

"Not the people of Cranagan."

**"Plasma Lancer."**

"Not your friends."

**"Legion Shift."**

"Not. Even. You!"

Fate swept her hand out, leveling Bardiche at the bound terrorist.

"Fire!"

The storm of Plasma Lancers exploded towards Sonoma. His body jerked and thrashed as they hammered him from all directions. His Barrier Jacket was stripped away almost at once. His device shattered under the repeated impacts, falling to the floor in scraps from his limp fingers. He was unconscious before the spell had expended even a quarter of its force.

Finally, it was over, the smoke clearing. Sonoma's body fell with a thud to the scorched carpeting, and there was no sound for a long moment but Fate panting for breath from the exertion.

"Long Arch-4 to SIB," she finally opened a communications link to the squad that had come as her escorts and helped coordinate efforts with the airport management. "Target is down. Come on up and get him so the airport can have their gate back, take him back to HQ, and have him booked."

"Yes, ma'am. Um, Commodore Harlaown?" the agent asked her hesitantly.

"Yes?"

"Don't you want to arrest him yourself?" That was all but inevitable, whether the officer was police, SIB, or Enforcement.

Fate gave the agent a quick smile and shook her head.

"It's all right. Hadn't you heard? I'm just a desk jockey now. Besides, I've got somewhere else to be. My daughter's in the medical wing, and I'd like to spend some time with her instead of the people who put her there."


	28. Chapter XXVII

Beep.

It impacted dully on her consciousness, a sound at the very fringes of her dreams.

Beep.

It was annoying, she thought vaguely. Discordant. It didn't fit in with the other thoughts that drifted idly through her mind.

Beep.

It came rhythmically, at precise intervals. That implied meaning and purpose. This vaguely disquieted her, as an unknown purpose might constitute a threat.

Beep.

She had better check this out, she decided, and opened her eyes.

"She's awake!" Nanoha exclaimed. Full consciousness rushed back in on Vivio as she saw her mother's desperately relived face. She was lying in a medical bed, surrounded by the usual diagnostic equipment, one panel of which was the source of the beeping sound that had played alarm clock.

"I told you that she'd be fine, Nanoha," Shamal said.

"Then why are you here like the rest of us, eh?" Vita said dryly. Shamal, however, was not to be baited.

"For the same reason Signum and Zafira are here, and the fact that this is _my_ patient in _my_ medical wing," she riposted. Vita just grumbled. "Now, Vivio," she continued, "you're currently suffering from—"

"The people," Vivio interrupted. "What happened? I remember that I couldn't hold the _Stahl-Festung_ any longer and Mama's spell knocked me for a loop—"

"Everyone's fine," Nanoha told her, smiling. For a moment Vivio had the thought that maybe her mother was lying to her so as not to depress her during recovery, but Nanoha would never have been able to fake beaming proudly the way she was. "The only part that got out barely reached the ground-floor windows; a few people had minor cuts from broken glass from standing too close when they shattered, but were easily treated by paramedics with healing magic. You actually took the worst of it because you were standing right next to the shield when it went down."

"That's embarrassing," Vivio muttered. "The last time you dropped a Starlight Breaker on me I didn't even pass out and I was six years old."

Vita cracked up laughing.

"We can tell she's your kid all right, Nanoha!"

"Mou..."

"If it's any consolation you only suffered any physical injury from hitting your head on the pavement when the blast knocked you out," Shamal explained. "You had a concussion, which thankfully we were able to properly treat through healing magic so as not to risk any possibility of brain damage."

Vivio groaned.

"I swear, we front-line types would all be vegetables by the time we were thirty if it wasn't for you healers, Shamal."

"Now why exactly is it that your student gets that, Vita, but you don't?"

"'Cause for most of my existence our physical bodies would be healed and reset to base by the Guardian Knight program, so there was no such thing as permanent injury?"

Vivio shifted in bed, and it was then she realized that the familiar weight around her right wrist of Parsifal's standby-mode bracelet was missing.

"Parsifal?" Her gaze flicked around the room, seeking her device and not finding it. "Where's Parsifal?" She remembered his core cracking near the end, and cold fear shot through her. "Was he—?"

"Mariel-san has him downstairs in the lab," Nanoha said. "He was badly damaged, so the repairs could take up to several weeks to complete, but he should be all right when it's all done."

"Mari did say something about taking the chance to install some upgrades while she had him in the shop," Vita noted. "You might want to check in just to make sure he doesn't come out with chrome trim and a turbocharger...whatever those are."

Vivio blushed, before realizing that the fact that she had a car nut mama and so would understand was why Mariel had picked those terms to tease her with by proxy.

Probably.

Maybe a visit to the device lab wouldn't hurt.

"So everyone's all right, then? That's good," Vivio said and leaned back.

"Can I finish up with you, then?" Shamal muttered testily.

"It's logical enough that she'd ask about others first, considering," Signum spoke up for the first time.

"Indeed. It speaks well of her and confirms our decision," Zafira agreed.

_Huh? Confirms what?_

"Yes, but it's very annoying to a doctor attempting to report a diagnosis to the patient."

"I'm all ears," Vivio said, "just like Zaffy."

Shamal blushed delicately. Vivio guessed she thought Zafira's ears were cute, or maybe that his superhuman hearing range was somehow useful in ways she didn't want to think about.

"A-anyway, you're suffering from a severe Linker Core drain. You pushed yourself to your utmost, and then maintained your Limit Break for two full seconds after Kaiser Mode failed. It badly overtaxed your Linker Core and resulted in a near-complete shutdown."

"Will I be all right?"

Shamal nodded.

"Oh, yes; there's no permanent damage. You should be fully restored in seven to ten days, but no magic use until then or you risk interfering with the healing process."

"So it's like way back when you stole my Linker Core, Shamal-sensei?" Nanoha asked.

"Actually, that's a very good analogy. Vivio's Linker Core was drained but not damaged, and will recover naturally." Her face suddenly fell into that caring-yet-concerned expression that meant she was about to give a patient bad news. "Um, but Vivio, when I say 'not damaged' and 'recover,' I am referring only to this incident. The damage you suffered as a child isn't going to reverse itself."

"That's okay, Shamal; I didn't expect that it would. But thanks for making sure that I know, because false hope is awful."

The mention of hope made her glance around the room again. Nanoha was there, and all the Wolkenritter, but not Fate. That was odd, since Fate was much more of a worrywart about Vivio's health than Nanoha.

"Where's Fate-mama? Did she have to go back to work?"

"The apparent leader of the terrorists, whom they think planned everything, wasn't among the people we captured while rescuing the McLarens, or at the site where the N4 was destroyed. Testarossa went to apprehend him."

"That's good. How did she find him?"

"Apparently, Sonoma used the same debit account to purchase tickets for his escape as he used to pay for the coffee at the Brass Ring at his second meeting with Captain McLaren. While the account was a prepaid, certified one and therefore connected with no identification, address, or other user data in and of itself, the purchase records are updated in the issuer's computer to track the remaining balance. A peril of our virtually cashless society."

"Go, mama," Vivio said with a smile. Signum's explanation, though, reminded her of another question. "What's going to happen to Captain McLaren now?"

Signum folded her arms over her breasts.

"He's a criminal. He gave nearly unrestricted computer access to a terrorist group that nearly resulted in the loss of millions of lives and a crippling blow to the TSAB military which could have resulted in countless further deaths across multiple worlds while coping with the repercussions."

"But he didn't know that! And he did it for his family, to protect them!"

"That's part of the point. He's proven where his loyalties lie, that he'll choose the people he loves over his duty. That's a valid choice as a human being, but not for a soldier. But in light of the circumstances, the fact that the crisis was averted, and that the information he provided was a key part in enabling us to actually stop the terrorists, Mistress Hayate pushed for the criminal charges to be suppressed. McLaren was permitted to take early retirement without a mark on his record."

"That's good. Wait..._was _permitted? How long was I out?"

"It's only one-thirty," Nanoha said. "It's just that Hayate-chan made that decision while martial law was still in effect. Since she was the supreme military authority for the district during that time, it meant that she didn't have to clear it with anyone else. She accepted his retirement, so the matter became closed and final."

"Nobody does sneaky like Aunt Hayate," Vivio said approvingly.

"Yeah, although the people in this room aren't exactly the best people to be judging 'subtle.'"

_Myself, Nanoha-mama, and the Wolkenritter,_ Vivio noted, and giggled. "You have a point, Vita-sensei."

"Which brings us to the next step. Nanoha, would you mind stepping back?"

"What? Why?"

"'Cause you're not a Wolkenritter, okay?"

"Um...all right. Do you want me to leave?"

"Nah, just stand back."

Nanoha got up from her seat by the bed. Shamal took the chair out of the way and came up to stand next to Vita, while Signum and Zafira moved up on the other side.

"Are you sure you don't want to do this, Vita? It would be proper, as she is your student," Signum asked.

"Nah. You're the leader. Besides, I'd probably mess up half of the words."

"Very well."

Light surged through the room and the Wolkenritter were suddenly clad in their knightly armor, with Laevatein and Graf Eisen in their weapon form. All four of them had turned their eyes directly to Vivio, who was all of a sudden extremely nervous. They didn't look hostile, but extremely serious nonetheless.

"Um...what's going on?"

"Takamachi Vivio," Signum declared. "By the word of your master, you have attained skill in the magical arts of Belka and in the techniques of battle. You have demonstrated your dedication to the ideals of fidelity, honor, and justice. You have sacrificed your personal pride for the sake of your sworn duty, and you have freely risked yourself for the sake of the lives of others. By these testaments you have proven your worth."

She swept Laevatein out so that the point was roughly a foot above Vivio's forehead. Thankfully, the flat of the sword was facing down rather than the edge or it might have seemed a little ominous.

"Do you swear to uphold your liege's honor loyally, obeying his commands in all things save when conscience demands otherwise, and stating so directly if needful rather than fearing reprisal?"

"If by 'liege' you mean my service in the TSAB military, then yes." _This sounds awfully familiar, somehow..._ Then it came to her where she'd read lines like Signum was reciting and her heart skipped a beat.

"Do you swear to maintain your honor above all worldly concerns, taking pride not in glory or the acclaim of others but only in the standards you maintain?"

"I do." Her answer was much firmer this time.

"Do you swear to never retreat from battle unless ordered, to valiantly defend your nation, your liege, and your comrades, and to at all times conduct yourself as befits your station?"

"I do."

"Then, as you have been proven worthy of the calling and have sworn to uphold its tenets, I hereby dub you, Takamachi Vivio, a Knight of Belka." The flat of the blade tapped her on both shoulders as Signum made the pronouncement. "May you never waver from the path, Vivio the Steel Queen."

"Thank you," she whispered, overwhelmed. She knew better than anyone except perhaps Hayate what knighthood in its original sense meant to the four of them. Relics of a bygone age, that title was a core element of their identity. That they felt she deserved to join them...

No, she wasn't surprised at all when she blinked and her eyes came away brushed with salt. Or that Vita all but broke down bawling when she sat up and pulled her mentor into a fierce hug, one that Shamal added onto and Zaffy snugged his muzzle up between.

She waited until the moment had passed to ask the question.

"So who came up with _Stahlkönigin_?"

"Well, we couldn't call you the Knight of the Shield, because that's Zafira's title, so I thought, y'know, the 'Iron Knight' would do," Vita said.

"But you're a little more refined than Vita is, so we picked 'Steel' instead of 'Iron,'" Shamal teased.

"And then we thought that we ought to acknowledge your initial identity in some way," Zafira stated. "So, 'Steel Queen.'"

"I suppose I can't really get around it. I mean, it is a part of me, and without it I'd never have met mamas or you or all of my friends. But...Signum, I'm still really glad you left the religious stuff out of the oath."

"It would have seemed rather ridiculous under the circumstances, which would not have suited the occasion."

Vita's response did not seem _quite_ so apposite as Signum's: "Pay up, furball."

"Huh?"

"I bet Zafira that you'd recognize the text of the oath of knighthood. 'Course, just because you're padding my income doesn't mean that I'll let you relax once training starts again. Now that you're supposed to be my equal and all that, I won't have to go easy on you any more!"

Vivio snorted.

"Go easy on me? You mean now you're going to start hammering me into walls _without_ my Barrier Jacket?"

Vita looked at her sourly.

"You were a lot more fun to tease when you were ten."

"And you were a lot cuter when you were a little kid, too—oh, wait, you still are."

"Wiseass."

"I was well-taught."

Vita grinned as widely as Vivio was.

"Damn straight you were. Now lie back and get some rest—_Your Majesty_."

Smiling, Vivio did as she was told. Zafira cocked his head to one side, a curious look on his wolfen face.

"Doesn't that form of address usually annoy you, Vivio?"

"Yeah, it does...but now, if it comes from one of the four of you, I'll know that I've honestly earned it."

The door slid open with a hiss and Fate walked in.

"Hi, am I too late?"

"Well," Nanoha said, "Vivio woke up, and Shamal-sensei told us all again that she'd be all right, and then Signum-san knighted her."

Fate blinked.

"What—knighted?"

Nanoha hooked an arm around her wife's waist.

"Come on, Fate-chan, I'll tell you all about it."

"Mou, what was the point of moving home if I'm going to miss all the important family moments anyway?"

"I'd demonstrate, but did you really want me to say in front of Signum-san?" Nanoha teased.

Vivio chuckled, snuggling down in bed and closing her eyes again, and let the chattering voices of her family keep her feeling warm and secure as she drifted into sleep.


	29. Epilogue

The sunset was brilliant, streaking the Cranagan sky in shining gold and blazing orange, the buildings silhouetted against it looking like black fingers desperately striving towards the glorious beauty. The seabirds Hayate had seen the last time she'd stood at this window weren't in evidence; perhaps they were settling down to nest for the night, or perhaps they were smart enough to decide that they were going to move on to a new home not normally subject to orbital attack.

"They'd be smarter than we humans in that case," she remarked softly, brushing her fingers against the glass.

"What was that?"

"Sorry, Marshal Sebring. I was just thinking out loud. At some point I really ought to try sleeping, if I don't want to start babbling randomly about everything and anything."

"Sleep can often be a luxury for people in our position." He chuckled, then added, "Of course, if you rise high enough, you can appoint people to worry for you. By the time I woke up this morning, the entire crisis had come, been resolved, and ended."

"You're deliberately trying to make me hate you, aren't you?" Hayate said, smiling.

"Oh, no. Basic military strategy says never to start a fight with a stronger enemy," he joked back. More seriously he said, "You did a good job."

"Mistakes were made, some of them by me. I should have called the Navy earlier."

"The Navy should have considered adjusting its maneuvers schedule after terrorists stole that information, rather than assuming that the theft was an accidental failure to steal more important data."

"I could have considered calling them back earlier. When I thought of using naval power against the Heimdalls it was strictly to destroy them. A boarding party could have deployed to disconnect the weapons systems from the computer control. If I'd thought of that and requested immediate help, they'd have gotten back in time anyway."

"Of course, if you believe in prophecy, then the only person who actually exercised free will today was the younger Takamachi."

"Prophecy doesn't look at an immutable destiny and report its events. It merely acts as a predictive analysis utility. We use our computers to do the same thing, only Carim's Rare Skill has access to sources of data that we don't."

"Sources of data?" Sebring said wryly rather than curiously.

Hayate wiggled her fingers.

"Why, don't you know, sir? It's maaaa-giiic!"

"Well, that's a relief," he chuckled. "Here I was afraid it was religion."

"We could ask Vivio, but she'd probably just get mad."

Sebring chuckled again.

"Well, if nothing else, these events certainly proved your point about Heimdall's suitability as a defensive system."

"I'll try not to say 'I told you so' _too_ many times when I address the subcommittee."

"Go ahead. With this incident cleanly resolved in a matter of hours and no loss of civilian life, your stock has never been higher. You won't have this chance too many more times."

"So terrorists nearly destroy Mid, and I end up boosting my reputation and enabling political and authority gains for the Ground Forces."

"Indeed. You've firmly proven that no system, no super-weapon, is a replacement for force coordination, and as regards the defense of Midchilda, it's the Ground Forces that are naturally placed to properly command such combined forces."

Hayate chuckled.

"Is something funny, General?"

"No, not really. It's just...I wonder who the first conspiracy theorist will be on the subcommittee, who decides that we engineered all this just to accomplish our ends. After all, I propose that we get rid of Heimdall, they take it under advisement, and not even a week later a perfect example of why I'm right crops up."

"That would be ridiculous. It would rely far too much on random chance and blind guesses as to how people would behave. It wouldn't be a plot so much as a gamble."

"Oh, someone will still think it, though. It's easier than looking up into the sky and saying, 'I was _that close_ to being destroyed, by people I don't know, for reasons I don't understand, that my actions in the past and present had no control over.' It's easy for us, because it's our job to fight such things with all we have, but for others, not so much." She grinned widely and added, "You know, sir, if I find the right reporter, since I have access to all the classified incident data I could feed him the perfect scenario and split the profits from the book deal!"

"Yagami..."

"Because that's the point, you know," she went on, ignoring her own joke. "I _want_ it to be unthinkable. Not because it's psychologically uncomfortable so people shy away from it, but because it's something that's so unlikely as to be all but inconceivable, as long as we're here, keeping people safe."

"It's a sweet dream."

Hayate shook her head.

"No, it's not a dream. It's a future, one that we're all reaching for with all our hearts."

She turned to face Sebring directly, then grinned sheepishly.

"Too sappy for a flag officer?"

The old man smiled, the deeply engraved lines in his face twisting and folding like a map, rearranging itself.

"On the contrary," he said, "perhaps that spirit is the sort of thing that we need going forward. My friends and I...that was what we felt when we pushed for the creation of the TSAB. The real fight is to keep that purity in your heart while you deal with the ordinary crises."

Hayate laughed.

"Oh, that won't be a problem, Marshal."

"Indeed?"

"Not with the friends I have. Frankly, it would be harder for me to step off the path _without _them pulling me back on than it would be to stay true."

She turned back to the window. Did she see streaks of pink and yellow light crossing the sky? More likely just the colors of the sunset against the clouds—but no matter; she knew they'd be there when she needed them, just like she would be for them.

And really, wasn't that the point of dreams, anyway?

~X X X~

_A/N: I can definitely see Hayate writing a conspiracy thriller accusing herself of masterminding the whole thing. She has that kind of sense of humor._

_I'd like to thank everybody who's come this far for reading; I had a lot of fun writing _Stahlkönigin_, and I hope people have enjoyed it. This also marks the end of the "Steel Queen Chronicle" series of stories. I started them as a "possible future history of Vivio" story, but of course now canon has come along and started taking things in (unsurprisingly) a different direction, so should I write future Vivio-centric stories (apart from my participation with RadiantBeam's ViCia/Shadows stories, which of course are AU but not _my _AU; she's just being nice enough to let me play with her concepts), I'll be pulling them back into the "real" Nanoha universe as best I can._

_My especial thanks go out to everybody at the AnimeSuki forums who have offered advice, corrected my errors of canon, translated spell names into German, and otherwise helped out in so many ways: JimmyC, Outlaender, GeshronTyler, RadiantBeam, Keroko, Satashi, TheShinySword, and everybody else...I couldn't have done it without you!_

_Oh, and if anyone is still wondering, Lt. Yaris's spell list comes from Lucia in _Lunar: Eternal Blue, _still one of my favorite all-time videogames._


End file.
